Old Stories, New Readings : The Transforming Power of American Drama [1 ed.] 9781443875714, 9781443872249

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Old Stories, New Readings

Old Stories, New Readings The Transforming Power of American Drama Edited by

Miriam López-Rodríguez, Inmaculada Pineda-Hernández and Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz

Old Stories, New Readings: The Transforming Power of American Drama Edited by Miriam López-Rodríguez, Inmaculada Pineda-Hernández and Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Miriam López-Rodríguez, Inmaculada Pineda-Hernández, Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7224-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7224-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ ix Miriam López-Rodríguez and Inmaculada Pineda-Hernández Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Judith Sargent Murray Triumphant: The Medium as Rational Entertainment Isabel Calderón Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Tracing the Romance of Theatre in some Classic Nineteenth-Century Novels María Ángeles Toda Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 35 The Influence of White Culture on the Sioux Ghost Dance of 1890 Joshua E. Polster Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 53 Intracultural Communication in African American Drama: From Pre-Emancipation to Early Twentieth Century Jocelyn A. Brown Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 71 Elsie’s Big Show: From Entertaining under Fire to Firing Stories in All Directions Felicia Hardison Londré Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 85 Sex Machines: Futurism and Modernity in American Expressionist Theater Yiyi López-Gándara

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 101 Triangular Transgressions: Tennessee Williams’ The Purification’s Debt to Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding José Badenes Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 115 Under House Arrest: The Family in American Drama Henry Schvey Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 125 Arthur Miller’s Plays Seen from a Feminist Perspective: Was Miller Sexist? Christiane Desafy-Grignard Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 141 Storytelling and Subjectivity in the Selected Dramas of August Wilson and David Rabe Ahmet Bese Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 151 Cancer on the American Popular Stage: Playing to a Sold Out House Virginia Dakari Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 171 If These Walls Could Talk: Performing Histories in the Works of Suzan-Lori Parks Nelson Barré Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 193 Freeing the Narrative: Interdisciplinary Methods for Exploring American Identity in La Chiusa’s The Wild Party (2006) and Kander and Ebb’s Curtains (2000) Gary M. Grant, Nancy Grant and Dustyn Martincich Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 213 Visual Explorations of Metaphysical Ideas in the Works of Sarah Ruhl Ola Kraszpulska

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Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 231 Love Triangles and Triangular Loves: A Home for Three in Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play Noelia Hernando-Real Appendix A ............................................................................................. 249 Defictionalizing Women Who Kill Claudia Barnett Appendix B.............................................................................................. 253 He Killed My Bird, or Now that We’re in Heaven Claudia Barnett Contributors ............................................................................................. 283 Notes........................................................................................................ 291

INTRODUCTION MIRIAM LÓPEZ-RODRÍGUEZ AND INMACULADA PINEDA-HERNÁNDEZ UNIVERSIDAD DE MÁLAGA

Whether imaginary or based on real events, stories are at the core of any culture. Regardless of their length, their rhetoric strategies or their style, humans tell stories to each other to express their innermost fears and needs, to establish a point within an argument or to engage their listeners in a fabricated composition. Stories can also serve other purposes, such as being used for entertainment, for education or for the preservation of certain cultural traits. Storytelling is at the heart of human interaction, and as such, it can foster a dialogic narrative between the person creating the story and their audience. In literature, this dialogue has been traditionally associated with narrative in general and with the novel in particular, however, other genres also make use of storytelling. Drama is one of them. The current volume explores the ways in which American theatre from all ages deals with this: how stories are told onstage, what kinds of stories are recorded in dramatic texts, and how previously neglected realities have gained attention through the American playwright’s telling or retelling of an event, or action. Stories may be classified in different ways: one of them is the narratological categorization of “big” vs. “small” stories. According to Mark Freeman, “there has been an increasing emphasis in narrative inquiry on ‘small’ stories (i.e., those derived from everyday social exchanges) rather than ‘big’ stories” (those that imply an individual’s reflection on either a specific situation, a whole life, or a portion of it) (155). The stories unfolded in American drama follow recent narratology theories particularly in the sense that there is a greater incidence of those so-called small stories over big stories. This can be explained by the immediacy of the dramatic text with its potential double impact, both on the textual level and on the performative level. When presented onstage these stories become vivid displays of ordinary social interaction (small stories), rather than the more complex and lengthy renderings of vital episodes (big stories). The immediacy and perishability of the dramatic

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performance thus conditions this narrative tendency. Despite the increase in the production of this type of texts and the growing interest in them in the field of narratology, small stories are literary episodes that have been granted less critical attention, expressly in Drama Analysis. This is why the present volume comes to fill a void in the study of the stories presented on the American stage. Hugo Bowles, in his groundbreaking Storytelling and Drama (2010), subdivides small stories into: the recalling of memories, the unfolding of anecdotes, the unveiling of secrets and the description of dreams. The essays collected in the present book focus on one or more of those categories in a wide range of US dramatic texts, from Native American performances, through musical plays, to canonical or even unconventional theatre pieces. Bowles distinctly concentrates on the linguistic analysis of specific scenes in American dramatic texts to trace narrative devices and associate them with the classification that he proposes. The present volume is more interested in the attention that American playwrights and theatre practitioners put on stories, rather than on the linguistic aspect of the texts discussed. This means that some of the chapters will explore the ways in which narrators of stories (playwrights, performers, or characters) will inevitably make a decision on what to include and what to leave out during the actual act of storytelling, accentuating the importance and meaning of the “non-dit”. Some contributors to this book have stressed the fact that the theatrical texts they analyze were designed as a direct result of the silenced stories that were left out the official record, from American collective memory. The intrinsic connection that exists between memory and the act of storytelling will be explored in three different levels: the unreliability of memory, the subjectivity of memory and the selectivity of memory. Some of the stories compiled here expose examples of characters/theatre practitioners misrepresenting a given event as in the case of the Ghost Dance; some other, unveil the willful subjectivization of specific episodes, as in Rabe’s or Wilson’s plays; and finally, some other stories reshape the original memory, to create a new text, as in Parks’s or Ruhl’s plays. One of the goals of this book is to trace the development of storytelling in the history of American Drama. This concept is traditionally associated with the genre of narrative (biographies, novels, novellas and short stories), regardless of the plot being based on true events or fiction. However, the rationale behind the present title is to consider that telling stories is part of the essence of American drama. From its inception in early colonial times to the most recent Off-Broadway productions, American dramatists have resorted to conveying their messages through

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the crafting of stories, even when that implied blurring the boundaries between genres. The influence that narrative has on drama, also works reversely, that is, essays and novels can be impregnated by the theatrical culture of a period. This book offers its readers different approaches to the act of storytelling, from studying plays that include the actual narration of tales and legends, to analysing specific playwriting styles, to discussing plays that provide their characters with the opportunity of voicing their otherwise silenced versions of the story. The present collection includes chapters not only about specific plays, but also about the stories surrounding the history of American drama, that is, the experiences of professionals such as dramatists, performers, stage directors, choreographers, and even a psychotherapist. In connection with this historical perspective, the essays have been arranged in chronological order, considering the production date of the plays discussed. Structural coherence was also a key factor when organising the chapters, that is why a strict chronological sequence was not followed with chapters ten and eleven. A second goal of this book, as suggested in its title, is to provide new readings to often analysed theatrical texts and also to cast light on previously neglected plays. On the one hand, there are several chapters that deal with canonized playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neil but instead of studying them from the usual epistemological point of view they offer readers a new interpretation of these writers’ works. On the other hand, some other essays focus on lesser known texts, such as Elsie Janis’s monologues and the Ghost Dance from Sioux folklore, or on less famous authors such as William Wells Brown, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, and Katherine D. Chapman Tillman. That these texts and dramatists are not so well known and not usually anthologized does not necessarily speak of their artistic value, but of the prejudices of the period when they were created. As scholars are becoming more open-minded in studying less canonized texts, these performative creations qualify now as dramatic texts. Our third and final goal is to explore the transforming power of theatre, and to discover the influence of the plays discussed in American society through history. The concept of transformation sometimes refers to the author and how a theme evolves in their oeuvre, thus reflecting a change in their way of thinking. And some other times this shift occurs not as an individual’s evolution but as a change in society’s views. Prejudices are overcome, stereotypes are dismantled, and therefore these texts remain the same but the scholars and critics appraising them do not. The first chapter of the current collection is written by Isabel Calderón,

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who considers that Judith Sargent Murray has been ignored as a dramatist because her plays were in production for a short period of time. Calderón argues that this disregard of Murray’s theatrical writings overlooks the fact that in the Republican Period the reminiscence of Puritanism implied a strong bias against theatre in general and women dramatists in particular. Murray’s defense of theatre, at a time when it was conceived as a sign of corruption, did not limit itself to her writing of plays, but it was also present somehow in her poems and essays. All her texts contain the same epistemological rationale (that is, the same stories) with a recurrent presence of the same topics (female equality, writing as a profession for women, female rational capability, and Woman’s thirst for knowledge.) Calderón is especially interested in analyzing the intertextuality of Murray’s plays, particularly The Medium, or Happy Tea-Party and Virtue Triumphant as she considers them as clear examples of the connection between Murray’s and drama writing. In “Tracing the Romance of Theatre in some Classic Nineteenthcentury Novels,” María Ángeles Toda explains how in Europe many degrees in English and American Studies offer hardly any courses on American Drama. Bearing this in mind, Toda proposes a didactic tool to expose university students enrolled in these courses to American drama. Aware that theatre is present in a number of canonical novels from the nineteenth century, Toda explains how by analyzing certain aspects of these novels, it is possible to explore the theatrical culture of the period and therefore make students more aware of the historical context in which drama was written. Thus, by reading old stories from a new perspective, María Ángeles Toda establishes the strong connection and mutual influence that these two genres, drama and fiction, share. Joshua E. Polster, in “The Influence of White Culture on the Sioux Ghost Dance of 1890,” explains how the arrival of white society to the Americas brought with it the destruction of Native American culture. At the end of the 1800s, the forced relocation to reservations together with hunger, despair and a feeling of gradually losing their cultural heritage made some Sioux leaders transform their traditional Ghost Dance ceremony into a restoration of their identity. This way, the original circle dance became not just a ritual by which the living would be reunited with the spirits of the dead but a political statement demanding the recovery of Sioux identity, lands, and traditions. This revitalization movement, inspired by the Paiute medicine man Wovoka, was a theatrical performance that included songs, music and artifacts. Ironically enough, and as Polster demonstrates, the Ghost Dance of 1890 was heavily influenced by white society, particularly by the evangelism of Mormons and Shakers.

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Chapter four, by Jocelyn A. Brown, is devoted to tracing the intertextuality present in those African American plays written in the decades right before and after the American Civil War. Brown’s “archeological work” revisits plays that have not been performed or thoroughly studied since their original production. After years of oblivion, and following their publication in 1974, these plays have gained limited scholarly attention. Acknowledging that African American drama in the nineteenth century was not abundant, and therefore its social influence was somehow limited, Brown stresses that nevertheless the plays by William Wells Brown, Mary Burill, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Katherine D. Chapman Tillman and Joseph Cotter offered a common ground where to build African American consciousness from. Felicia Hardison Londré offers us a glimpse of the six-month experience of American comedienne Elsie Janis as a volunteer entertaining the American troops at the front and in military hospitals in France during the First World War (1914-1919). As Londré explains, Janis was so influenced by what she had seen and felt during her European stay that she spent the rest of her life ruminating and re-wording those events by writing about them, singing them, reliving them to the point of obsession. As many former combatants, Janis remembered the hard moments among the seriously wounded, and the danger faced during the bombings, but above all she remembered her six months of comradeship, bravery, and sense of purpose. By studying Elsie Janis’s monologues, Londré expands the canon including in it a performative act that would not be traditionally labeled as a theatrical piece. In “Sex Machines: Futurism and Modernity in American Expressionist Theater,” Yiyi López-Gándara exposes the use of machines as a central element in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922) and Dynamo (1929), Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923), and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928). Scholars have usually analysed these expressionist texts as presenting the mechanization of modern society as a cause of fear and anxiety; although López-Gándara does not reject this reading, she proposes that for these playwrights machines were also an object of desire. Influenced by another avant-garde movement, Futurism, American expressionist artists saw machines as a fetishized representation of modernity. López-Gándara wonders whether emphasizing the negative view on technology is so clear in the analyzed texts or it is a result of how most original productions presented the plays. In chapter seven, “Triangular Transgressions: Tennessee Williams’ The Purification’s Debt to Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding,” José Badenes analyses the plot and style of Lorca’s and Williams’ above

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mentioned plays to trace the obvious parallelisms between the two texts. Although there are no clear evidences of Williams having read Blood Wedding, by studying his biographies and correspondence Badenes demonstrates how Williams was familiar with Lorca’s poems and sympathized with his ideology. Badenes’s analysis of the influence of Lorca on Williams focuses primarily on the way both playwrights use the love triangle plot. This representation of forbidden desire highlights these authors representation of human sexuality as a symbol of freedom and a departure from conventions. In “Under House Arrest: The Family in American Drama,” Henry Schvey analyzes how some twentieth-century American playwrights reinterpreted the notion of family. If in previous centuries family was represented as a secure haven for the individual, Schvey argues that contemporary drama depicts familial relations as incoherent, unstable and a source of turmoil. This chapter focuses particularly on Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1941), Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1947), Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1945), and Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class (1978) and Buried Child (1979). Although they are very different from a stylistic and thematic perspective, these five plays share a common presentation of family as a debilitating, castrating, and/or damaging element in the lives of their protagonists. Christiane Desafy-Grignard, in chapter nine, reviews Arthur Miller’s plays from The Simon Trilogy in the 1930s to The Last Yankee in 1994 to find out if sexism is present and to what extent. Analyzing Miller’s work from a feminist perspective, by focusing on his portrayal of female characters, Desafy-Grignard tries to determine whether his depiction of women is homogeneous throughout his career or it reflects an evolution. From his first plays to those written during the 1950s Miller’s plays portray men as the characters around who everything evolves; however, from the mid 1950s to Miller’s death in 2005 his work offers in almost every case a female protagonist. Desafy-Grignard discusses whether this change represents a real change in Miller’s attitude towards women or just a superficial make-over. Chapter ten is devoted to tracing the concept of storytelling and subjectivity in several plays by August Wilson and David Rabe. By focusing on Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971) and Streamers (1976), together with Wilson’s Ma’ Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), Ahmet Bese explores how the protagonists created by these two playwrights construct their identities through the stories and lies that they tell and retell to the other characters in the plays. According to Bowles, distorted reminiscences can be created not only in

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the actual changing of the details of a story, but “it is the selectivity that distorts” (122). Combining truth and lies through their several retellings of past events, Wilson’s and Rabe’s characters create their own personas by means of storytelling. With this analysis Ahmet Bese establishes a clear parallelism between two playwrights who are not usually studied together, thus offering his readers a new perspective. Virginia Dakari in her “Cancer on the American Popular Stage: Playing to a Sold Out House,” considers the representability and marketability of disease as it is tackled in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Margaret Edson’s Wit (1995), and Susan Miller’s My Left Breast (1994). While the last two plays revolve around their protagonists’ fight with ovarian and breast cancer, respectively, in Williams’s play cancer is a less obvious part of the story. In Cat the disease and immediate death of Big Daddy is part of a subplot usually left aside by scholars, who tend to focus on the younger characters. Dakari’s theoretical framework is informed, among others, by Susan Sontag’s critique of the aestheticization of cancer and Barbara Ehrenreich’s conceptualization of the existence of a lucrative cancer marketplace. Chapter twelve, by Nelson Barré, is devoted to the study of SuzanLori Parks’s rewriting of American history in her plays The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), The America Play (1995), Venus (1995), In the Blood (1999), Fucking A (2000), and Topdog/Underdog (2001). Barré is interested in discovering how Parks searches for truth and meaning in the world she has constructed. According to Barré, Parks challenges traditional cultural mythology, with its concept of family, by reconsidering well-known stories. Resorting to contemporary feminist revisions of narrative, Barré explains how Parks reclaims and reenacts a forgotten past on stage. Barré insists that Parks moves beyond the rewriting of history to the creation of new “histories” through the act of re-membering historical events, and she does so through the performance of history. In Barré’s view, Parks defies the myths around which Americans have constructed narratives that elevate half-fulfilled promises of equality and salvation from the stains of history. “Freeing the Narrative: Interdisciplinary Methods for Exploring American identity in La Chiusa’s The Wild Party (2006) and Kander and Ebb’s Curtains (2000)”, by Gary M. Grant, Nancy Grant and Dustyn Martincich, is the only chapter in this book to discuss musical theatre. Grant et al focus on Bucknell University’s production of these two musicals, providing us with the comments of the stage director, the choreographer and a psychotherapist. Their goal is to bring to light the

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deeply rooted connections that actors have with the characters that they perform to unveil musical theatre as a more authentic experience, beyond the mere singing and dancing. This chapter also explores the ways in which the use of physical masks in the narrative of these two musicals can be employed as a sign of the development of character identity. The two last essays in this volume analyze the plays of Sarah Ruhl. On the one hand, we have Ola Kraszpulska’s focus on scenography as she considers that the performance of Ruhl’s plays brings out metaphysical ideas through visual examinations. Kraszpulska argues that both Metaphysics and Theatre share a common concern for the fundamental nature of being, particularly in the sense of conceiving a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses. Kraszpulska analyzes Passion Play (2003), Eurydice (2003), Clean House (2005), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007), In the Next Room (2009). Kraszpulska considers that Sarah Ruhl’s texts help stage designers in creating a world of suggestive reality, a metaphysical realm. In these four plays, as well as in her other titles, Ruhl distills the essence of life, creating a study in metaphysics. On the other hand, Noelia Hernando-Real focuses only on this last play, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. Hernando-Real proposes that, as opposed to what male playwrights have traditionally arranged, Ruhl creates multiple triangular relationships for her female characters so that they can reinvent themselves, their homes and their love. The most unexpected triangle of all is the one formed by the protagonists, Mrs. Givings, her husband, Dr. Givings, and a vibrator. Hernando-Real concludes that In the Next Room teaches spectators, both men and women, to reconsider their love stories and the triangular love that supports them. But it particularly tells the story of Mrs. Givings, a woman who has bravely defied her defective triangular love that artificially supported her home by becoming an agent in her own love story. The present volume contains also an appendix in which Claudia Barnett introduces her unpublished play He Killed My Bird, or Now that We’re in Heaven (2012) along with a brief preface in which she explains how this one-act play brings together the female protagonists of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), Maureen Watkins’s Chicago (1926), Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928), Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in this House (1980) and Carson Kreitzer’s Self-Defense, or Death of Some Salesmen (2004). All of these characters are inspired by real women who gained notoriety after being indicted for murder. Barnett envisages a conversation in which the murderers, while waiting to enter heaven, are given the chance to explain the motives behind their crimes thus allowing them to voice what they were previously denied, both in real life and in the

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original plays. Once introduced the different parts that constitute this book, let us say a few words on its editors: We are specialists on American drama and members of a research group focusing on this topic (HUM-302, University of Málaga). We often collaborate organizing international conferences, lectures, and other academic activities aimed at spreading the results of both our study and that of other Americanists. Among the events we have coordinated are four international conferences on American theatre and drama held at the Universities of Málaga, Cádiz, and Seville in the years 2000, 2004, 2009, and 2012. During these four-day symposia scholars from all over the world gather to discuss their research on American drama, creating a fruitful exchange of ideas around the specific topic of each of the conferences. They offer all participants not only the opportunity to learn from what other colleagues are reading on, but also the chance to compare how the study of US drama differs from one country to another. Before these conferences were organized, most universities in Spain did not devote too much space in their syllabi to the study of the theatre performed in the United States. Fortunately, this has changed gradually with more American literature courses including plays as part of their compulsory reading. Even entire courses devoted to American theatre are now being taught at graduate and postgraduate level. A similar evolution is taking place in other European countries. Over the years these academic activities have fostered strong scholarly bonds that have resulted in the publication of several volumes about different aspects of this field of research.1i It was in the aftermath of the last international conference, held in Seville in 2012, that we decided to contact some of our colleagues, both from Spain and overseas, to prepare a collection of essays on the topic of narration on the American stage; taking the idea of ‘stage’ not necessarily as the place confined within the walls of the theatre, but more widely as the performative space where other arts, such as dancing, can be developed. We were particularly interested in researching the connection between drama and telling stories, whether focusing on the transforming power of recounting, on the use of retelling old stories, or on offering new readings of already well-known narrations. In any case, we never intended for this book to be an anthology on narratology or rhetoric, but on how American drama uses narrative as a dramatic tool.

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Works Cited Bowles, Hugo. Storytelling and Drama: Exploring Narrative Episodes in Plays. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2010. Freeman, Mark. “Life ‘on Holiday’? In Defense of Big Stories.” Narrative—State of the Art. Edited by Michael Bamberg. Amsterdam: Benjamins Current Topics, 2007. 155—163

Introduction i

Arranged by date of publication, some of these books are:

CHAPTER ONE JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY TRIUMPHANT: THE MEDIUM AS RATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT DR. ISABEL CALDERÓN-LÓPEZ UNIVERSIDAD DE CÁDIZ

[I]t is for mental strength I mean to contend, for with respect to animal powers, I yield them undisputed to that sex, which enjoys them in common with the lion, the tyger, and many other beasts of prey. (Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes”)

Life is not without its attendant mysteries; one of these pertains to the scant literary afterlife of Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820). Despite the prolific writing career that this intellectual developed during the early republic in Massachusetts as an essayist, poet, playwright, writer of fiction and letters, both the paucity and content of the body of criticism on her wide-ranging personal and intellectual achievements reveal that her longing for posterity has in the long run unfairly met indifference at best and condemnation at worst. As Therese B. Dykeman puts it, “[i]n the 1930s, Vena Bernadette field, her main biographer, deemed her writing to be of ‘minor’ significance, and Mary Summer Beson found it didactic and tedious, and still in the 1980s Jacqueline Hornstein termed it ‘sentimental moralizing’” (217). It is difficult to come up with good reasons to explain why Murray’s legacy continues to be a controversial issue despite evidence that she was a revolutionary and a pioneer several times over. By way of illustration, in her landmark essay “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), for which she is best known, Murray made the first public claim for female equality in America, two years before Mary Wollstonecraft published her renowned “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792), with identical demands for female education to bring women level with men on rational grounds. Murray’s intellectual concerns seem to have originated early in her own experience as a girl greedy for knowledge, the daughter of socially

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prominent parents who catered to her scholarly thirst even if, unlike her brother Winthrop, Judith could have never aspired to Harvard.1 Later in life, she could—though not without censure—choose to dissent from the established Church along with her family, and profess Universalism, a liberal branch of Protestantism that defended religious freedom and the equality of souls in God’s eyes. Her publication in 1782 of a Universalist catechism attests to Murray’s determination as well as consistency as an upholder of equality and instruction. It was the earliest writing by an American Universalist woman. Murray’s heroic pioneering and her interests did not stop at that, but had continuity and in fact flourished in the 1790s in Boston, where she moved with John Murray, her second husband, after being widowed by John Stevens. There in the capital the couple could share intellectual and religious concerns, John Murray being —no wonder for a woman of firsts— the founder of Universalism in the United States. Murray’s Bostonian flourishing as a writer bore abundant and tasty fruit: she contributed regular essays to the Massachusetts Magazine, one of the leading journals of the day. In them Murray vented her progressive ideas on equality, women’s education, theology, drama, with such fervor and craving for favorable reception that she chose to shield herself from public censure for writing on such themes behind pen names such as “Constantia,” “The Gleaner,” “Mr. Vigillius,” or “The Reaper.” When in 1798 Murray published a three-volume edition of her Gleaner essays, she became the first woman in America to self-publish a book, and a successful book at that, which attracted over 700 subscribers, among them President Adams and George Washington. Murray thus succeeded in establishing a position for herself at the center of cultural and political activity. Though not a complete account for a life amply documented thanks to the happy conjunction of Murray’s verbosity and her desire for posterity, this biographical sketch may suffice to understand the need to restore her due to Murray. For, as another popular truism about human existence goes, life is unfair, and in the present case it has capriciously relegated this “first feminist,” this “mother of the American Republic” (Schofield 1990, 2932), this first American Universalist woman, to obscurity. Furthermore, Murray has oftentimes been cast in the mold of “a most complex author,” owing to the monumental quantity and variety of her work, punctuated by inconsistencies and contradictions (Scobell 9). Even more importantly for our purposes here, Murray’s contribution to the history of early American drama has repeatedly been downplayed mostly on grounds of eighteenth-

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century performance and reception circumstances beyond her control. As Harris notes, [s]cholars have typically assumed that the quality of [Murray’s] plays warranted their short runs. However, such assumptions ignore the bias against female playwrights (xxxvii)

In what follows, hence, it will be argued that Judith Sargent Murray stands in need of reassessment as a highly consistent authoress who, though in different guises and through different voices, inflected the same topics all throughout her career with a very clear educational agenda, regardless of the chosen genre, and despite writing in a transitional age marked by turmoil and change. As a concomitant result of this epistemological perspective, Murray will emerge as a woman dramatist who merits consideration as a foremother of the American stage both for her contribution to dramatic criticism, namely, for her eulogy of the theater at a time when it was conceived by many as the site of dreaded corruption. Likewise, as a dramatist who not only was the first American—male or female—to have a play performed at the Boston Theatre, but also ventured to put her theories of the “utility” of drama into practice in the guise of the then dominant romance brimming with tears, so as to render the intellectual side to her drama more palatable to an audience used to transatlantic sentimental plays.

Yes, I must write Thus opens the poem entitled “Lines written in my closet,” one of Murray’s most personal compositions and a very interesting one for the keys to her authorial stance it contains. The inaugural affirmative interjection sounds like the compelling reassurance after a long-held selfdebate as to the convenience of writing. The reasons for such a conclusion in the affirmative all refer to her subjective well-being: “it soothes, and calms my mind, / And with my pen, my fairest hours I find” (ll.1-2). Murray thus imbued the process of writing with therapeutic virtues, which might partly account for her copious production. She lived through a transitional age in which beliefs sanctioned by tradition collided with rebellious, egalitarian and anti-authoritarian ideals (Scobell 4-9). Hers was a world of light and shade that bestowed on women a new dignity in the figure of the Republican mother, as instructor in the ideas and values of the new nation encouraging their education; but, paradoxically, continued to keep them separate from the public sphere as mothers within their domestic confines. It is against this background that Murray’s poem

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sounds its full implications: it phrases Murray’s closet as a fertile locus amoenus poeticus, distant from cares, providing enclosed shelter “[w]hen heart felt sorrows every where surround, / And with their barbed arrows deeply wound” (ll. 13-14); and guarding her against “the censuring tongue of rancrous malice” (l. 16). Murray’s wording conjures up a military siege to signify the hostile, slanderous world outside, while it sacralises her closet’s inner space by having God preside over the room (“[n]one but my Father God my conduct views, / Who with paternal love my steps pursues;” ll. 17-18), and herself feel “sacred joy” (l. 6), like a hermit in “[m]y lov’d retreat, my little sheltering place” (l. 8). Murray’s closet poem is therefore most valuable in that it signals the woman’s vital need for intellectual activity, the great divide for her between the public and private spheres, the hostility of the former, and her sense of vulnerability when having to confront reception. For heard she would be.

Yes, I confess With these words, Murray opens her serial essays entitled “The Gleaner” that she wrote for the Massachusetts Magazine from 1792 to 1794. What the writing hand goes on to confess is great ambition for fame: “I love the paths of fame, / And ardent wish to glean a brightening name” (Gleaner I 13). The confession must have been quite familiar to those of Murray’s close acquaintance, but for her Gleaner essays she assumed the identity of a male character, Mr. Vigillius, “observing, in a variety of instances, the indifference, not to say contempt, with which female productions are regarded” (Gleaner III 313). Paradoxically then, her craving for recognition led Murray to disembodiment, to concealment beneath a male character. Thus closeted, Murray could aspire to public acclaim and to make her writing effectual albeit vicariously. In Mr. Vigillius’ own words, I am rather a plain man, who, after spending the day in making provision for my little family, sit myself comfortably down by a clean hearth, and a good fire, enjoying, through these long evenings, with an exquisite zest, the pleasures of the hour, whether they happen to be furnished by an amusing tale, a well written book, or a social friend. (Gleaner I 13-14)

The cozy and enjoyable closeted space reveals an uncanny resemblance between Murray and Vigillius, but for the former’s sense of entrenchment as opposed to the latter’s public dimension. The likeness continues as Vigillius declares his “violent desire to become a writer,” his “unaccountable itch for scribbling” (14), and his choice of “an appellation”:

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I have thought best to adopt, and I do hereby adopt, the name, character, and avocation of a GLEANER ... [F]eeling myself entitled to toleration as a Gleaner, in this expressive name I shall take shelter, standing entirely regardless of every charge relative to property, originality, and every thing of this nature, which may be preferred against me. (15-16)

Murray’s anxiety over authorship might have led her to the production of “The Repository,” another column of essays for the same journal and during the same time lapse, under the pen name of Constantia. As in a set of Chinese boxes, Gleaner contains Vigillius, Vigillius contains Constantia, and Constantia contains Murray, who thus shielded herself from the censorious audience in order to impart her rebellious musings to them. Still, in 1794 Murray produced another essay series “The Reaper,” for the Federal Orrery, though it was stopped short soon after her disagreement over editorial intrusive procedures. Murray’s indefatigable writing venture turned her into a “‘Protean’ subject” (Desiderio 11), assuming different authorial identities, even though either behind Constantia (i.e. constant) or Vigillius (i.e. vigilant); behind Gleaner, Repository or Reaper, one can always sense the same anxious persevering industry that led this ambitious eighteenth-century American writer from domestic enclosure to vast media fields. There was as yet some dangerous ground to tread: the theater.

Yes, I maintain it Once again in the affirmative, denoting conviction and resolution, the words opening The Medium, or Happy Tea-Party (later retitled in print as Virtue Triumphant), the first of two plays written by Murray one year after “The Reaper” project, may nicely serve to introduce this section on her dramatic enterprise as climactic proof of consistent perseverance in her favorite epistemological topics.2 It was actually as The Reaper that Murray somehow advanced the subject matter of her first comedy. The essay in question recounts the story of the contrary extremes to which the Reaper (Murray herself) went when a poor old man knocked on her door begging some money. As the Reaper, Murray narrates how, though wholly uncommiserate at first, on her little daughter’s compassionate remark about the man being old and sick, she gave him all she then had on her, thus alternating between meanness and squandering. The Reaper concludes:

6

Chapter One [E]qually avoiding opposite extremes, I should have pursued the calm and happy medium, which results from that order, which is the offspring of wisdom. (“The Reaper” no. 2 10)

In Murray’s Enlightenment epistemological-moral rationale, “wisdom” adumbrates “order” and “order,” in turn, adumbrates the golden mean or “happy medium.” The egalitarian principle was not new in Murray’s pen; indeed it was the be-all and end-all of her philosophy all throughout her motley writing. As the true child of an age that held Equality as one of its most precious ideals, Murray conjugated it in many of its forms, mostly in the Christian egalitarianism of her Universalist Church and in the gender egalitarianism she missed no opportunity to advocate. Both converge early in her writing career in the composition of her Catechism and “On the Equality of the Sexes.” Both anchor Murray’s egalitarian arguments in a series of questions designed to dismantle the received notions of the blind multitude. In the latter, for example, Murray asks “in what the minds of females are so notoriously deficient or unequal (132).3 And again, about men’s much-trumpeted rational superiority: “May we not trace its source in the difference of education, and continued advantages?” (133). Eventually, Constantia’s defiant tone gives way to pointed, irate declaration of equality in her usual interjection in the affirmative: Yes, ye lordly, ye haughty sex, our souls are by nature equal to yours; the same breath of God animates, enlivens, and invigorates us. (134)

Murray’s personal declaration of independence is then firmly buttressed by witty factual evidence. She proves, for example, the fallacy of the received notion that physical strength is coterminous with mental capacity, by bringing up the case of Mr. Pope, a man of “enervated” and “diminutive” body, but the representative of the Age of Reason. Subsequently, Murray resorts to the Bible for more evidence in order to “combat that vulgar, that almost universal errour” (224) of man’s superiority, and states her intention “to bend the whole of my artillery against those supposed proofs” (224) provided by the opposing male side. Murray’s “artillery” is dialectic, heavy with antithetical argumentation, aimed at disclosing wrong perception and the tyranny of custom; its effects, devastating: not only does she engage in desacralization by reducing David to someone “enervated by his licentious passions” (223), or Job to a curse on “the day of his nativity” (223); but Murray’s exegesis turns it all over, and ends up revealing Eve not

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governed by any one sensual appetite; but merely by a desire of adorning her mind; a laudable ambition fired her soul, and a thirst for knowledge impelled the predilection so fatal in its consequences. (225)

Conversely, Adam could not plead the same deception; assuredly he was not deceived, ... as he had proof positive of the fallacy of the argument, which the deceiver had suggested. (225)

The use of forensic tactics seems attuned to Murray’s epistemological concerns, and proves, in the very act of (clever) writing, the point on female rational capability that the text everywhere seeks to make. Selfreflection also seems to underlie Eve’s characterization as a woman avid for knowledge. This biblical version of Murray herself, a victim of her own epistemological craving, bears an uncanny resemblance to other female characters in her writing. These tend to be strong, have a firm resolve, but are normally orphaned figures in need of protection. Eliza Clairville is one such figure in Virtue Triumphant, the play that Murray chose to write after her essays, but one that must have been always on her mind, since, judging from her preceding work, neither the comedy’s subject-matter nor its ideological approach were anything new. In fact, as Dykeman puts it, “[v]irtue [is] the organizing theme of The Gleaner” (1999, 222). Furthermore, according to Edward Watts, “[t]he plays themselves mirror the internal drama of The Gleaner” (69), that to him as to Mary Anne Schofield is that “[m]ale perception is inaccurate throughout ..., and the women take it upon themselves to educate the male properly” (1991, 266). In fact, (male) prejudice and custom are cast in the roles of villains in a comedy whose epilogue makes the triumph of virtue dependent on “truth [that] brightens to the eye” of “the observing mind” (87), almost a paratextual indication as to how the play’s potential recipients should approach the composition for its full meaning and their maximum benefit.4 To some extent, the transition from poetry, letter and essay writing to drama in Murray’s oeuvre all seems but natural. Skemp, for example, argues that Murray’s “own letters were lively and amusing, filled with bits of dialogue and little vignettes that never failed to entertain” (2009, 250). Elsewhere, Skemp also brings out Murray’s use of dialogue “as a pedagogical tactic” in her Catechism to bear upon her composition of drama (2009, 445). Murray’s groundwork in the practice of dialogue notwithstanding, if we judge from the content of her plays, it seems equally plausible to trace a connection between essay and drama writing.

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So much so that many of Murray’s essays, well stocked with characters and dialogued parts, are imbued with dramatic quality. In Baym’s words, characters such as Clarinda Meanwell, or Charles Candour—figure in brief stories illustrating the value of Murray’s favorite virtues and the dire consequences of neglecting them (x)

Nothing less is present in Virtue Triumphant, with similar allegorical names such as Matronia Aimwell or Dorinda Scornwell, and equally involved in the same morality play aesthetics. Conversely, Murray’s plays, inflecting and assaying topics pivotal to her essays such as equality, education, and marriage from different perspectives, might be read as essays performed on the boards. This realization lays bare Murray’s consistent agenda, as she turned from essays to drama, carrying with her the same tenets even though the new medium was more public. According to Skemp, Murray was comfortable writing for the Massachusetts Magazine, where her readers were an ‘invisible public,’ existing in her own mind (2009, 252)

Her playwriting instead entailed not just the fleshing out of her long-held arguments in the unpredictable bodies and voices of actors and actresses, but also the incarnation and visibility of her mental public, her face-to-face encounter with the long-feared “licentious rabble” (Skemp 2009, 237). And reality proved to be even more fearsome, with actors forgetting their lines, and herself “laid open to all the severity of criticism” (Gleaner I ix). Hence, Murray’s play writing signals her progressive abandonment of reclusion in the peaceful and safe retirement of her closet, for the noisy and exposed stage of the public world. But the attempt must have been worth her while, given the alluring prospects of educating her fellowcitizens in her open-minded egalitarianism. In her own words, [t]he stage is undoubtedly a very powerful engine in forming the opinions and manners of a people. Is it not then of importance to supply the American stage with American scenes? (Gleaner III 262)

In the public sphere, the new republican female ideal provided Murray with a privileged stand, her audience embodying the offspring to be educated and supervised in the new American moral and ethical values. So much, for instance, is inferred from the role she arrogated to herself in her column of the Massachusetts Magazine as a champion for the dramatic

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arts “at a time when it was not popular to do so, especially for a woman” (Bennett 33). In Gay Gibson’s words: In March, 1795, two years before the licensing of the Boston theatre, many Bostonians associated the stage with upper-class decadence, class intermingling, loose morals, disease, and prostitution. Associating with those who labored in the theatre ruined a woman’s reputation, because to the pious, the theatre was a place of febrile emotions and dangerous imaginings. It was certainly a space forbidden to ministers’ wives. (171)

These obstacles notwithstanding, Murray opposed antitheater legislation and went on to eulogize the theatre mostly for the intellectual benefits it portended. In so doing she engaged in the current central debate over the state and usefulness of American theater at a time when it was mostly regarded as an entertainment that threatened to destroy the new innocent Republic with the corruption of the English scenes which were then so much the vogue.5 The difference though was in Murray’s conception of the theatre as “an entertainment so incontrovertibly rational” (Gleaner III 226); it was a matter of emphasis, though not for that a small matter. Mercy Otis Warren, for example, also raised her voice in defense of the theater in her preface to The Sack of Rome (1790), and held that in [t]heatrical amusements ... in an age of taste and refinement, lessons of morality, and the consequences of deviation, may perhaps, be as successfully enforced from the stage, as by modes of instruction. (11)

Both women dramatists then agreed on the usefulness of the theatre: to Mercy Otis Warren, as a container of practical lessons in morality; to Murray, as an agent of instruction, “highly influential in regulating the opinions, manners and morals of the populace” (Gleaner I 227). This larger, more inclusive concept of the theater lies at the heart of Murray’s dramatic musings in essay 24 in The Gleaner series: I conceive it will not be denied that, from a chaste and discretely regulated theatre, many attendant advantages will indisputably result. Young persons will acquire a refinement of taste and manners; they will learn to think, speak, and act, with propriety; a thirst for knowledge will be originated; and from attentions, at first, perhaps, constituting only the amusement of the hour, they will gradually proceed to more important inquiries. (I 230)

In Murray’s ideology, the useful instrumentality of the theater not only metamorphoses simple young persons into refined American citizens, able to exercise their minds virtuously, with propriety; but its agency goes

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beyond the stage by promising that the dramatic experience will make the children of the new American Republic inquisitive, Eve-like figures with “a thirst for knowledge.” In other words, it would give them food for thought while whetting their rational appetite for more. Hence, Murray envisages an optimistic future when “the audience will refine the players, and the players will refine the audience” (240), an interactive process of mutuality resulting in overall improvement. Once again the voice of the visionary resounds with solemnity to announce that, The theatre opens a wide field for literary exertions; and we anticipate a rich harvest of intellectual pleasure and improvement. The sons and daughters of fancy, the sentimentalist, and the moralist; these will engage in the interesting competition. (The Gleaner I 228-29)

Quite interestingly, Murray’s reflection here seems to contain the three pillars of her dramatic architecture as playwright: reason (“fancy”), sentiments (“sentimentalist”), and morality (“moralist”), in that order. Thus, in keeping with the vogue for moral pieces conveying the triumph of virtue—a key republican ideal—in the sentimental tradition of English Restoration plays, 6 Murray’s drama, in particular her first play, Virtue Triumphant, makes virtue and its triumph dependent on the supremacy of reason rather than sentiments, that become instrumental. The Medium, or Happy Tea-Party was performed at the Federal Street Theater on March 2 1795. For this most public event, Murray renewed the authorial mask by announcing on the title page of her play that it had been written by “a Citizen of the United States.” With it she might have tried to secure acceptance from those compatriots who favored the creation of a native dramatic tradition (Skemp 2009, 252-53), even though bold statements of nationalism are really kept to a minimum in the comedy (Richards 87). Despite Murray’s efforts, the convergence of unskilled actors and ill-intentioned criticism put paid to her play: [E]verything fell apart. One actress forgot her lines, burst into tears, and fled the stage. The rest of the cast barely ‘hobbled through’. (Skemp 2009, 255)

Unfortunately, the severe reception of Virtue Triumphant after its performance, like a curse, continues to hang on Murray’s dramatic production, while concessions to merit in her plays have a marginal, codalike character to them. As a recent example, Skemp writes:

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Neither The Medium—or Virtue Triumphant as Judith ultimately called it—nor The Traveller Returned were unusually bad or especially good. ... But most modern critics would probably agree with Zoe Detsi-Diamanti’s assessment of Virtue Triumphant as “stilted and dull.” The Traveller was only marginally better. Both plays were derivative, filled with humorous stock characters and trite plotlines. Still, Judith’s depiction of women was largely her own. And Virtue Triumphant, in particular, reflected an interestingly ambivalent attitude toward both marriage and class to which Judith did not usually admit. (2009, 261)

Despite initial concurrence with general trend among Murray’s critics in the underestimation of her dramatic production, Skemp’s coda acknowledges Murray’s capacity for originality and debate on key issues in her time. Therefore, trying to reverse tradition, in the last section here, an attempt will be made to prove that Murray merits consideration as a foremother of the American stage on account of her defense and use of the theater as an intellectual site of debate, thus investing it with a dignity both denied it by her age, and unknown to the vacuous and trite sentimental plays brimming with tears that were then all the rage. “YES, I maintain it; this project of my son’s the height of folly” (VT 15; italics added). Starting thus in media res, with Ralph Maitland’s firm assertion, the inaugurating exchanges in the play establish an epistemological framework in the way of a pregnant opening, that contains the keys to its meaning. Bearing in mind that the play’s original title was The Medium, or Happy Tea-Party, Murray seems to have plunged into her topic, probably with the educational aim of circumscribing the abstraction of her title, of making the play concrete and useful to her audience from the very start. Thus, in answer to servant Weston’s subsequent “As how, Sir?” Maitland replies: As how, Sir? Has he not, passing by the happy Medium, beyond which no action can ever be right, rashly leaped all bounds, and pressed forward to that extremity, which being the farthest from the centre, is the greatest possible remove from the propriety and fitness of things? (VT 15)

Then, from the outset, Murray manages to make clear her subject matter, by defining it as the classical golden mean, and by fleshing out the abstract “medium” of the title in the character of Ralph Maitland. But, at the same time, she also reveals the difficulties attendant on the achievement of the Enlightenment idea as evident from Maitland’s immoderate long-winded speech that, quite literally, to use his words above, leaps “all bounds.” In fact, Weston remarks at once: “But, sir, may it not be necessary to observe a little moderation with the young

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gentleman?” (VT 15). Herein lies one of the most pervasive ironies in the play: Ralph Maitland, the declared champion for equality, the center, the medium, is himself the model of fanaticism and error. This fact warns against the dangers of self-delusion if not guided by rational prudence, and puts spectators and readers on the alert against making rash judgments, since appearance can be so delusive. Without yet disclosing that “the height of folly” of Maitland’s son, Charles Maitland, is infatuation with the virtuous but poor Eliza Clairville, Murray sets out exchanges in the opening act that continue to inflect the rational subtext of the play and its overlap with the otherwise ethical Medium: Maitl. [A] Medium is ever self-balanced—it is the centre of perfection— the philosopher’s stone—the genuine panacea for every evil. It is that divine alchymy [sic], the operation of which will finally transmute this iron age of ours, restoring the golden reign of philosophy and of reason. (VT 16)

This upholder of the prelapsarian golden age of reason, though, continues to prove its remoteness by rashly misrepresenting other characters and consequently finding his prejudice contradicted by new evidence at every turn. His most important mistake is his misjudgment of his son’s beloved Eliza Clairville, whom he deems an ambitious fortunehunter (VT 17). But he also misconstrues his female counterpart, Matronia Aimwell, whose visit on financial business he misinterprets in terms of seduction. Whereas, to conceited Ralph Maitland, Matronia is just “a whimsical kind of woman” (VT 19) with a design to marry him; as her very name suggests and the play goes on to show, Matronia is a motherly figure “with the most upright intentions” (i.e. Aimwell; VT 24), whose only aim in life is the well-being of others under her protection. Murray thus confronts two parental figures in the characters of Ralph Maitland and Matronia Aimwell: the male one totally and foolishly absorbed in his philosophical raptures, one of “the votaries of folly” in Matronia’s words (VT 25); the female figure, instead, all-wise, protecting and always attentive to others’ needs. It is not the only debate at the heart of the play; subsequently, the play goes on to inflect in the “masks” of different characters, many of the pervasive topics, tenets, and even the dialectical method that we find elsewhere in Murray’s literary output. Pivotal to Virtue Triumphant is another misconception, namely, the protagonist Eliza Clairville’s that she is the child of indigent parents. As a consequence, she refuses to marry upper-class Charles Maitland despite loving him deeply. She tells him: “I never, but on equal terms, will plight my faith with your’s” (VT 32), which again articulates Ralph Maitland’s

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class conservatism. The contradictory side to her material egalitarianism is exposed by Mrs. Augusta Bloomville, Matronia’s orphan niece: Do you not perceive, Eliza, that it is hardly consistent with your slighty sentiments, to set such a prodigious value on money? (VT 44)

To this Eliza answers: I do but submit to a necessity which the despot, Custom, hath rendered irreversible; and besides, Madam, who that hath experienced the luxury of wiping the tear from the haggard cheek of penury, will deny, I had almost said, the omnipotence of money! (VT 44)

Within very few lines, Murray’s virtue-commerce debate articulates different stances and moves through different stages: from an implied defense of sentiments above money in Bloomville’s words, to money victory as “despot, Custom” has it, and the final circumstantial triumph of money dependent on Eliza’s personal experience. Again, quite significantly and ironically, it is Eliza, “the blest shrine of bright TRIUMPHANT VIRTUE” (VT 86), who proclaims the “omnipotence of money.” Elsewhere, however, a more liberating brand of egalitarianism is also voiced by Eliza when Ralph Maitland, finally confronted with the evidence of her virtue, tries to make her consent to marry his son: Maitl. But it is very natural for a young woman to contemplate an establishment by wedlock. Eliza. Undoubtedly, Sir; but, as I believe there are joys and sorrows peculiar to every situation in life, and, as I have conceived that it is not so much the part, as the acting well that part, which entitles the performer to respectability, so I am determined to rest satisfied with that character in the Drama, in which the great Manager seems to have cast me my lot. (VT 61)

Eliza’s relativist stance is not different from the voice heard in the essays: “[T]he chance of a matrimonial coadjutor, is no more than a probable contingency” (Gleaner III 219). Other characters, embodying other perspectives, contribute to the unresolved debate on marriage held in the play, by alternately making it a matter of interest (as with Ralph Maitland’s early prejudice about Matronia), fashion, or friendship. Thus, Matronia’s question to her niece, “[i]n the name of Heaven, Augusta, why did you marry?,” is followed by Augusta Bloomville’s “[b]ecause— because—it was the fashion, Madam” (VT 76). Again, in Matronia’s wise words, “[f]riendship is still the ne plus ultra of every married pair” (VT

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78). Spinsterhood for its part (as represented by Matronia) is given as a happy choice of self-fulfillment, or as the consequence of dutiful resignation (as represented by Eliza before becoming aware of her true social class). And in the Bloomville couple, marriage is a relationship in progress that wants care: started for fashion on the wife’s part, but heading for eternal friendship, though not resting on love. As in the composition of her essays, Murray seems to be actually assaying the pros and cons of relevant questions that she passed on to her audience in the hope that, true to the educational project of her play writing, such issues would make them reflect and achieve “intellectual pleasure and improvement,” as she anticipated in her “Panegyric on the Drama” (Gleaner I xii). As Eliza’s words above prove by resorting to stage imagery, Virtue Triumphant also accommodates the controversial theater topic. In fact, throughout her play, Murray misses no opportunity to harp on about the intellectual value of theater. Thus Dorinda Scornwell, the scoffer at feelings typical in sentimental plays, but also the embodiment of dissipation and its nasty outcome, is made to scoff at the lachrymose vogue in plays: “There is an affectation of sentiment, which is altogether intolerable” (VT 38). Her condition as a reprehensible character is further emphasized and used by Murray when she has her remark: “I prefer cards to conversation, a ride to a book and the ball-room to the play-house” (VT 38). Through the equation conversation-book-play-house, and its opposition to the idle triad cards-ride-ball-room, Miss Scornwell’s declaration clearly implies that the house of drama is the venue of intellect, definitely the place to frequent if one does not want to be ranked with Dorinda and her frivolous, empty, abhorrent kind. But certainly, the most interesting metatheatrical comment is given to Eliza in Act IV, as she posits that, having conceived that it is not so much the part, as the acting well that part, which entitles the performer to respectability, so I am determined to rest satisfied with that character in the Drama, in which the great Manager seems to have cast me my lot. (VT 61)

The comment, ominous in view of the ill performance that would ruin the play only after its first showing, is not just a clever metaphor for Eliza’s resignation to her fate, but one of old: the vita-theatrum topos that casts life as drama, and that in Murray’s pen implies the sacralization of theater and of the author-God as “the great Manager.” As for the women subject, the play conjugates it under different typical guises: as angels (Eliza, Matronia), benefactresses (Matronia, Augusta Bloomville), coquettes (Augusta Bloomville, Dorinda Scornwell), or

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prudes (referred to by Scornwell; VT 40). While these seem to imply reductionist black-and-white female stereotypes, judgment is problematized, as in the case of Augusta Bloomville whose characterization changes throughout the play from selfish and inconsiderate of her indulgent husband, to loving and devoted wife (“a pattern of wifehood;” VT 80). Furthermore, although Augusta may not be a good wife to her husband, having married him just for fashion, she is a good motherly figure to Eliza whom she protects. Virtuous Eliza relativizes the benefits of married life; and Matronia for her part is a solid star, wise, strong, charitable, unmarried and protectress of Eliza and Mrs. Bloomville.7 At one point in the play, the three ladies, under Matronia’s wise and sensible leadership, make up “a happy trio” (VT 80) of feminist camaraderie, ready to share experiences and extend consolation to one another, which makes a contrast to the isolation of male characters. Of them it is Colonel Mellfont who is risen to prominence, not just as uncle to virtuous Eliza, but, above all, as the treasurer of wisdom: about Eliza’s unknown secret of wealth and noble birth (which provides the play’s dénouement); but, most importantly, on a more transcendent level, wisdom about the play’s secret wealth, that Murray, either aware of its subversive import and/or trying not to discourage her audience with too rational drama, seems to have masked behind sentiments and tears. As a matter of fact, Colonel Mellfont is given words that take center stage and sound the voice of “the great Manager” (Murray herself) addressing her recipients. Thus, at the heart of the play, in Act III, Mellfont utters the most eloquent words in the play: the world is, indeed, given to error; it is only a select few who see things as they are; while the blinded multitude, borne in the vortex of folly, will continue their idle whirl on the very brink of destruction. (VT 51-52)

Mellfont’s transtextual statement is underlined by Ralph Maitland’s immediate word-for-word repetition of what seems to him “a striking sentiment” (VT 52), which is again dramatically ironic since Maitland fails to recognize himself as a member of that “blinded multitude.” Quite certainly, the world of the play is “given to error,” resulting from prejudice and rashness.8 Flashet, for example, with a self-revealing name, is “that coxcomical wretch” (VT 33), the incarnation of rashness and the ensuing confusion and nonsensical bragging: [A]s I am a soldier, I will lend thee a blow that shall lay thee as stiff as was Julius Cesar, when he was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell. (VT 56)

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Murray revisits here a point familiar in her essays: potential physical (male) strength is no guarantee of rational capacity. Actually, Flashet is just one of those “vaunters of fortitude” (225) put to blush by Murray in “On the Equality of the Sexes”. Furthermore, stage directions describe him as doing things “precipitately” (VT 23) and “vehemently” (VT 55), just like Ralph Maitland, a further example of male error. Colonel Mellfont, however, is shown in Act IV as the true embodiment of skeptic wisdom when, confronted with arguments in utramque partem, for and against a certain proposition, he chooses to suspend his judgment, thereby achieving ataraxy or emotional balance, the true golden mean: Your sentiments, Madam, are a perfect contrast to those of Charles Maitland; and you will forgive me, if, in a point so nice, I suspend my judgment. (VT 73)

Thus he reacts to Dorinda Scornwell’s slanderous comments on Eliza. By the end of the play, even Ralph Maitland himself couches self-anagnorisis in similar epistemological terms in his last appearance: [W]ho would ever have thought Ralph Maitland could be brought to this! ... but words are vain—they are the extremes of folly; and silence only, the Medium of wisdom! (VT 86)

Here the all-pervasive term, “Medium,” quite appropriately for Maitland’s new wiser stature, acquires the larger sense of “means.” Very fittingly as well, where Maitland’s opening speech was verbose and denounced folly while incurring in it; his last one, instead, is at a loss for words and ends up exalting wisdom which he joins up. Quite clearly then, by the end of the play, the happy “Medium” of the title has been epistemologically redefined as that unerring condition in which the rational being who stops to ponder things finds judgment suspended between the extremes of a multifarious paradoxical reality, and led to further inquiry. The virtue achieved transcends the moral concept; it is true wisdom to the skeptic. This interpretation rings true if, apart from the more explicit examples just mentioned, we bring to the fore the epistemological import of the story traceable in the recurrence everywhere of words such as “prejudice,” “error,” “ignorance,” “reason,” “rational,” or “folly.” As a logical culmination therefore, wise Colonel Mellfont is given the words that sound the epilogue: VIRTUE is still TRIUMPHANT, and rectitude its own reward; for, although her just arrangements are not always so conspicuous, yet, pointed

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by conviction, truth brightens to the eye, and the observing mind will trace the lineaments in every proper action, nor hesitate to own the blest complacency that still attends on VIRTUE. (VT 87)

Mellfont, seemingly addressing the audience all throughout the play with his gnomic sayings, drops here the mask to openly proclaim the triumph of virtue, although he declares this poetic justice dependent on epistemological conditions of “conviction,” “truth,” and an “observing mind.” According to Murray in her “Panegyric on the Drama” essay, a direct result of theatergoing is that [t]he Pompeys of our day ... will retire from the theatre, converts to the virtuous and impartial designations of equality. (Gleaner I 228)

It was this independent and inquisitive stance that Murray’s “rational entertainment” promised. From the perspective held in this study then, Virtue Triumphant had everything in it to commend it: fashionable sentimentalism (the young lovers’ weeping and sighing), morality (betrayed by the very names of characters and the title), and republican ideals (virtue, moderation, patriotism). It seems as if Murray deployed all of the elements that she knew could make her play succeed, not just to secure popular acclaim (with its attendant fame and financial profit); but also to accommodate her less orthodox views, and her epistemological agenda. All in all, Murray’s spectators could have enjoyed the Gleaner’s fruit of wisdom ripe and ready for them to taste in an appetizing theatrical presentation, but for want of ripeness themselves. Suffice it to say that life is just a matter of time, and it is to be hoped that Judith Sargent Murray will soon emerge triumphantly from undeserved oblivion and misapprehension. On her mother’s gravestone, Julia Maria had the following epitaph carved: “Dear Spirit, the monumental stone can never speak thy worth;” we can though.

Works Cited Baym, Nina. “Introduction.” The Gleaner. By Judith Sargent Murray. Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 1992. iii-xx. Bennett, Alma J. American Women Theatre Critics: Biographies and Selected Writings of Twelve Reviewers, 1753-1919. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. Desiderio, Jennifer. “The Periodical as Monitorial and Interactive Space in Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 18.1 (2008): 1-25.

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Dykeman, Therese Boos, ed. The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Gibson Cima, Gay. Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Harris, Sharon M., ed. Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray. New York: Oxford, University Press, 1995. Murray, Judith Sargent. “Lines Written in my Closet” (MS. V.1, p. 287). First publ. by Tammy Mills in “‘Lines Written in my Closet’: Volume One of Judith Sargent Murray’s Poetry Manuscripts” (2006). English Dissertations. Paper 11. —. “On the Equality of the Sexes.” The Massachusetts Magazine. Vol II. Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1790. —. “The Reaper,” no. 2. Federal Orrery 27 Oct. 1794: 10. Murray, Judith Sargent. The Gleaner: A Miscellaneous Production in Three Volumes by Constantia. Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1798. Richards, Jeffrey H. Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Schofield, Mary Anne. “The Happy Revolution: Colonial Women and the Eighteenth-Century Theater.” Modern American Drama: The Female Canon. Ed. J. Schlueter. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1990. 29-37. Schofield, Mary Anne. “‘Quitting the Loom and Distaff’: EighteenthCentury Women Dramatists.” Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820. Eds. Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1991. 260273. Scobell, Sara. “Judith Sargent Murray: The ‘So-Called’ Feminist.” Constructing the Past 1.1 (2000): 4-23. Skemp, Sheila. Judith Sargent Murray: A Brief Biography with Documents. Boston: Mass.: Bedford Books, 1998. Skemp, Sheila. First Lady of Letters: Judith Sargent Murray and the Struggle for Female Independence. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Warren, Mercy Otis. Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous. Boston: by I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1790. Watts, Edward. Writing and Postcolonialism in the Early Republic. Virginia: The University Press of Virginia, 1998.

CHAPTER TWO TRACING THE ROMANCE OF THEATER IN SOME “CLASSIC” NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELS: A DIDACTIC PROPOSAL MARÍA ÁNGELES TODA IGLESIA UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA

If U.S. drama is no longer “the unwanted bastard child” of American Studies, as Susan Harris Smith once put it (112), in most Spanish universities it continues to be a very limited part of the syllabus in American Literature. Due to time restrictions and the need to offer a series of common, general courses, few Departments can afford to have complete courses focused on U.S. drama, although some exceptions exist.1 This is particularly so with nineteenth-century drama, which tends to be regarded as minor in an age of great novelistic and poetic works. My purpose here is to suggest how it is possible to use some frequently studied classic nineteenth-century American novels in order to give students a glimpse of certain aspects of the theatrical culture of the period, centering on three main issues: firstly, on the role of Shakespeare as model and icon; in the second place, on the suspicion and caution with which very popular forms of theater, particularly melodrama, continued to be regarded; and finally, on the fascinated attraction that in spite of this strong opposition all forms of drama continued to exert over U.S. audiences; in other words, on the romance of theater in nineteenth-century America. The stunning opening sequence from Brian Gilbert’s 1997 film Wilde works well as an attention-catcher to introduce some of the peculiar characteristics of U.S. theatrical culture in the 1880s. After its sophisticated fin de siècle titles, accompanied by Aubrey Beardsley drawings, the film abruptly seems to break all genre conventions and mutes into a traditional western, depicting a group of riders approaching a mining town to hoorays, whistling and applause. The camera then focuses on the newcomer, a cool urbanite figure that is soon revealed to be the

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young Oscar Wilde. Although conditions were of course very different in urban areas, this rather realistic depiction of Wilde’s arrival to Leadville in his lecture tour of the West gives a vivid impression of both the unsophisticated nature of many audiences and of their thirst for culture. It is important to notice that at this point Wilde was not yet known as a playwright, but as the inspiration for a character in a popular play: Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1881 comic opera Patience, which led D’Oyly Carte, the New York producer, and his American agent Morse to plan an American tour for Wilde that would promote the play by introducing American audiences to the original of the caricature (Fido 50, 56). This can already be used to introduce a recurrent feature of the theatrical culture of the period: its continuing reliance on material that had already proved successful in Britain, in spite of the insistence on the need for the creation of specifically American works which was a constant cultural concern from the Early Republic onwards. One active participant in this debate about the development of a national literature was Herman Melville. In “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (1850), his extremely Romantic, rather exalted and highly nationalistic review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s collection of short stories, he tries to argue for the possibility of the appearance of an American Shakespeare, and in doing so provides a most significant overview of the cultural meanings of the figure of Shakespeare in nineteenth-century U.S. culture. While this particular Melville text is rarely studied in detail in undergraduate courses, the issue of nationalism in literature and the quest for the Great American Artist is inescapable in any general course that covers Romanticism, Transcendentalism and the American Renaissance. In the first place, Melville’s review constructs Shakespeare as Romantic genius, the ultimate incarnation of the poet as prophet propounded by Romantic writers from Wordsworth to Emerson. From this perspective, Shakespeare is the truth-teller, the seer, and the inspiration for Melville’s own work and for that of the “philosophers” who see beyond Shakespeare’s most apparent attractions (407). However, what is most relevant to the theme under discussion is the alternative vision of Shakespeare offered in “Mosses.” In a very modern, contextualized reading, made possible paradoxically by the Romantic emphasis on history, Melville deconstructs his own Shakespeare-as-Genius as well as his culture’s Shakespeare-as-Icon, reminding readers that in his own time the playwright was only Master Shakespeare of the shrewd, thriving business firm of Condell, Shakespeare and Co., proprietors of the Globe Theater in London. (410)

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In doing so, he links Shakespeare to a specific theatrical culture, which includes production and performance as well as artistic creation. It is no less relevant, however, that Melville suggests at the same time that the actual performance of Shakespeare’s plays, as opposed to their written text, debases their real significance; popular audiences value what to him is the least valuable aspect of Shakespeare, precisely the playwright’s effectiveness as the great man of tragedy and comedy. —’Off with his head! so much for Buckingham!’ This sort of rant, interlined by another hand, brings down the house. (407)

Lawrence Levine’s classic study, “William Shakespeare and the American People,” confirms this vision of a popular Shakespeare. Not only were between one-fourth and one-fifth of all plays performed in nineteenth-century U.S. Shakespeare’s (36); Levine insists above all on the fact that throughout this period Shakespeare had a large audience at all levels, from urban theaters to “makeshift stages in mining camps” (46). A striking instance of this, and one that offers a perfect link to Moby Dick (1851), one of the classic novels that still holds its own in American Literature courses, is the 1848 playbill for an amateur theatricals performance on the whaling ship Alpha, included in the Nantucket Historical Association Collection. Taking this playbill as a starting point, it is possible to give a glimpse of the nature of theatrical performances in the first half of the century. The performance (“Wind, Weather and Whales permitting”) includes scenes from Shakespeare’s Othello, but also a comic song, a recitation, and a farce. This parallels Brockett and Findlay’s description of a typical evening at the theater, which would generally be composed by a full-length play followed by a short farce, musical drama, or pantomime; between the acts of the dramatic pieces were interlarded variety acts (19)

with the aim of attracting as broad an audience as possible. The whaling ship playbill, like many real ones, appeals to the presence of supposedly famous actors, thus providing an opportunity to point out how much theater advertising centered on well-known star performers, such as Edwin Forrest, or, later in the century, Eugene O’Neill’s father, famous for over 6000 performances of The Count of Montecristo (Bigsby 37). Moby Dick itself gives evidence of the pervasive influence of Shakespeare as model and cultural icon, or more accurately, of the two Shakespeares Melville outlines in “Mosses”. When Melville comes to

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creating Ahab, an American character of Shakespearean stature, he certainly draws on his vision of Shakespeare as genius, giving his character, as many critics have noted, features from some of the playwright’s “dark” characters. Ahab’s links to Macbeth, an overreacher attempting to usurp authority and misled by equivocating prophesies, yet fighting a desperately heroic last battle, and to King Lear, deprived of his power and accompanied in his isolation only by the ship’s Fool, played by crazy Pip, and by the loyal opposition of the Cordelia-like Starbuck, have often been identified and can be easily introduced in class discussion. Robert Milder analyzes the function of the dramatic scenes, and particularly of Ahab’s speeches — modeled on Elizabethan drama to the point that some sections scan as blank verse (Walcutt xvii-xviii) — as a non-realistic mode of characterization: Melville draws on Shakespeare in order to provide his protagonist with a language on a scale adequate to his heroic, if misguided, thoughts and actions (43). In doing so, he invests Ahab with the dark expression of “intuitive Truth” he attributes to Shakespeare, as in a practical application of his belief that “there are minds that have gone as far as Shakespeare’s into the Universe” (1850, 409). Undoubtedly, however, Melville also plays on his contemporaries’ less specific admiration of Shakespeare as the greatest figure in what we would now call the canon. In spite of his distrust of “the tricky stage” (408), Melville constructs Ahab in a way that is clearly influenced by contemporary traditions in the performance of Shakespeare, and which again opens up the possibility of using the novel to give students information about theatrical culture in the nineteenth century. In chapters such as “The Forge” or “The Quarter-Deck,” whose theatrical nature is underlined by the stage direction that opens it, the “vigorous, tempestuous, emotional,” “strong acting style” (Levine 51; Butsch 380) that characterized the most admired contemporary Shakespearean actors is paralleled by Ahab’s delivery. Ahab’s staging of his offer of a reward for the sighting of Moby Dick can certainly be viewed from this perspective: Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the mainmast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: Whosoever of ye raises me a white headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look you, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have that gold ounce, my boys! (1851, 165)

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His heightened vocal delivery, underscoring the highly rhetorical, mounting, three-part structure of his speech, and his powerful sustained gestures are a good instance of “bravura acting” (Brockett and Findlay 24). As to vocal delivery, Levine quotes contemporary praise for Edwin Forrest’s performance as King Lear, employing “mingled tones of shriek and sob” (52); Melville employs similar terms to describe Ahab’s tone when the captain grieves about his maiming by Moby Dick (166). As to gesture, Ahab’s exhibition of the golden coin, and the act of nailing it on the mast, not to speak of other highly spectacular actions such as his grasping together the three extended lances of the harpooners, or his final ritualized “communion” drinking to the death of Moby Dick, would be highly effective on stage. The intensely dramatic scene thus built up in chapter 36 is then followed by a series of soliloquies of the main characters, and then by the midnight revels of chapter 40, still presented like a scene from a play, which could also be related to the tradition of early nineteenth century performance in that it introduces songs, dances, and a fight, although it more specifically echoes the darkly comical scenes in Shakespeare’s tragedies which momentarily break up tension while still underlining the major tragic themes. However, the final point that could be stressed is the effectiveness of Ahab’s performance in terms of audience: the entire crew, with the exception of Starbuck, is as rapt in Ahab’s spectacle as any contemporary audience caught by the “romance of theater.” Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1885) is perhaps even more useful as a “point of entry” into the characteristics of US theater, here specifically in the context of the antebellum rural South which is the setting for the novel. Twain himself would have most certainly agreed with Melville’s complaint that [t]he Thirty-Nine Articles are now Forty . . . You must believe in Shakespeare’s unapproachability, or quit the country. (1850, 409)

Twain’s skeptical attitude to the question of the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, and above all to the impossibility of questioning the figure of Shakespeare, is most manifest in his 1909 essay “Is Shakespeare Dead?” included in his autobiographical texts, in which he humorously defends the so-called Baconian theory. Yet even here, Twain states: There has been only one Shakespeare. . . . This one was not matched before his time; nor during his time; and hasn’t been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time is not bright. (34)

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In fact, the presence of Shakespeare in Huckleberry Finn is pervasive and revealing. As will be remembered, Huck and Jim’s relatively peaceful life on the raft is interrupted by the arrival of the duke and the king, two confidence men escaping from an angry mob, who begin by performing the roles suggested in their names to the initially rapt audience of the protagonists. The younger duke, who has already referred to his past as an actor, presents himself as an impoverished aristocrat in sentimental language drawn from the best tradition of melodrama, including the final anagnorisis: “The secret of my birth . . . Gentlemen, . . . I will reveal it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!” (183) His companion follows suit announcing his supposedly royal origin, and although even Huck soon realizes that the men are “just low-down humbugs and frauds” (185-6), he keeps up the pretense to keep the peace, and is promptly drawn again into the romance of theater when the confidence men decide to give acting a try, and inevitably choose scenes from Shakespeare. As Levine comments on this episode, the fact that the presentation of Shakespeare in small Mississippi River towns could be conceived of as potentially lucrative tells us much about the position of Shakespeare in the nineteenth century. (34)

The description of the rehearsals at the beginning of chapter 21 may be used to introduce several points. Huck particularly admires the sword fight from Richard III, the kind of scene that would be selected for, and enjoyed by, the predominantly male and rowdy audience that theater historians describe as typical of the first half of the century, and which Levine compares to spectators at a present-day sporting event (Butsch 378-9; Levine 42-45). The boy’s approving description of the dramatic pose adopted by the Duke in his delivery of Hamlet’s soliloquy, which to a present-day reader sounds like the epitome of “ham acting” (198), can be contextualized as a parodic exaggeration of the period’s acting style, that may be illustrated for students through portraits, engravings and photographs of nineteenth century actors in their roles. The humor acts as a reminder that by the 1880s this acting style had come under attack not only by cultured spectators such as Twain himself (Wiggins 281), and presumably his adult addressee, but by various attempts to achieve greater historical accuracy and a degree of realism on the American stage (Brockett and Findlay, 24-25, 50-51). The soliloquy itself —supposedly Huck’s version of the Duke’s reconstruction from memory—has often been commented on. David Carlyon points out that in nineteenth century America there was a “widespread fondness for Shakespearean parodies,

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founded on the audience’s knowing appreciation of the plays,” while he also reports the editor of the 1848 Hannibal Journal storming against this practice as part of a circus act (7). If in this case the parody is “somewhat heavyhanded” (Coveney 390), this may be partly explained because of the intended readership of Huckleberry Finn, which was originally meant as a boys’ book. Even if some of the parody might still go over the heads of young readers—like other aspects which to an adult reveal Huck’s ignorance and ingenuousness—Levine points out that American children would have been familiar with Shakespeare in school, mostly “as declamation or rhetoric” rather than literature (51). It is clear from all this that even for people who had never attended a performance of any Shakespeare play or read its entire text, the playwright’s presence in nineteenth-century culture was inescapable, as his production became “repeatedly cited and recited, translated, taught and imitated, and thoroughly enmeshed” in the culture, as in Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s definition of what makes a work become valued as a classic (53). The playbill set up by the duke can be profitably compared to real contemporary examples, as it amplifies in its parodic excess several of the main “selling points” used in antebellum U.S. to attract audiences (Twain 1885, 200). The exceptionality of the performance (“For one night only!”); the abundance of adjectives such as “wonderful,” “sublime,” “thrilling,” “blood-curdling,” “masterly,” “immortal,” “illustrious,” and the sprinkling of exclamation marks are all characteristic, not to speak of the mention of London and Paris theaters as a guarantee of quality at a time when, in spite of American nationalism, Europe continued to be seen as the cultural center of the world. Equally characteristic is the mention of new costumes and scenery and of the support of the “whole strength of the company” (which in this case is of course limited to the two actors). Marcus Cunliffe affirms that through all the nineteenth century American audiences liked “large casts, romantic plots and spectacular effects” (435), such as may have appeared in box-office hits like George Aiken’s 1852 adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Dion Boucicault’s melodramas, which included spectacular special effects (Brockett and Findlay 11). Lastly, the playbill in Twain’s novel, like the one on the whaling ship Alpha and like many real ones, emphasizes the importance of the actors themselves. The joke for adult readers is that there was actually no David Garrick “the younger” and that the real Edmund Kean the elder had died in 1833 (Coveney 38990). The real Edmund Kean and David Garrick, as actors of mythical renown, were the kind of names that would ring a bell even in a “little onehorse town” in antebellum Arkansas (Twain 1885, 199). Edmund Kean had in fact played in US theaters in 1820 and 1825, so contemporary

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reports and images can be used to give a significant idea of how he performed the Shakespearean roles that gave him fame, and analyzed both in terms of historical accuracy and acting style.2 Other kinds of performances apart from Shakespeare are also present in Huckleberry Finn and can be briefly employed to give more glimpses into nineteenth-century theater. “The King’s Camelopard, or, The Royal Nonesuch,” the presumably obscene, farcical performance used by the confidence men to trick the audience in another village, and Twain’s selfcensorship in its presentation, has been discussed by Wallace Graves, among others. The duke’s comment after adding the “biggest line of all” at the bottom of the playbill, “LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED” —”’There’ says he, ‘if that line doesn’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!’” (213) — is highly revealing of the nature of rural audiences and of nineteenth century gendered discourses of space and respectability as analyzed by Mary Ryan (qtd Butsch 376). Finally, the circus scene that precedes this episode can be used as one of the best literary representations of the “romance of theater,” in this case from the point of view of an innocent, uncultured, perceptive boy spectator who is totally caught by the illusions created by the performance. These include the illusion of beauty and wealth composed by the costumes and makeup — the female riders “with a lovely complexion, . . . and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, and just littered with diamonds” (210) — and the illusion of spontaneity and ease, as when Huck praises their riding as “so gentle and waving and graceful” (210) or is amazed at the clown’s capacity to invent quick responses to the ring-master’s words (211). David Carlyon points out that the circus scene is not historically accurate, presenting a sentimentalized vision more in line with the more refined tastes of the 1880s that with antebellum circus acts, which would have been “tawdry, coarse, and violent” (1). He does comment, however, that the audience reactions described by Huck (including some male spectators’ attempt to storm the ring and forcibly expel the “drunken rider” that is supposedly an intruder but actually part of the performance) do correspond to that rougher past (10); although the whole audience is as taken in as Huck himself, it is only the boy who worries about the drunken rider’s danger, while the others laugh and jeer (Twain 1885, 211-12). The episode, then, can be used to present one more form of popular theatrical entertainment and contemporary audiences’ reactions.3 The role of diverse forms of theater as popular entertainment, and the strong moral condemnation that even less popular forms of theater received, is a crucial issue to emphasize in even a summary vision of nineteenth-century American drama. Several histories of U.S. drama begin

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by informing readers that the first mentions of theater in the territories of British North America are related to attempted prohibitions. As is well known, the actors of the performance of Ye Bear and Ye Cub, known only by its title, were tried (albeit not condemned) in 1655 in Virginia, not even a Puritan colony (Richardson 3; Meserve 153); David Grimstead, in Melodrama Unveiled, traces a detailed history of this anti-theatrical attitude. It is usually possible to elicit from a class the causes of this condemnation, as they do not differ from those that were present in many other countries till fairly recently: the general association of actors with immorality and promiscuity; the vision of theaters as spaces which encouraged illegal relations between the sexes and favored prostitution; and the fear that plays, in the same manner as other works of fiction, could appeal to the emotions and the imagination rather than to the rational mind and cause a distorted vision of reality. More specific causes, such as the additional bases for the “Puritan distaste for, and suspicion of, theater” (Smith 114), including the concept of acting as a form of lying, may need to be explained. Such Puritan attitudes to theater are vividly present in Stephen Crane’s Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1891, 93). His presentation of theater in this Naturalist novel is not only a good opening to introduce students to various forms of popular entertainment in nineteenth-century USA, but also a good reflection of the different perspectives from which these theatrical forms came under attack. Maggie is a much-studied text, probably because of its brevity as much as its representativeness, and furthermore much attention has been paid to its links to the theater. Both Janet Overmyer and Donald Pizer, among others, and Eric Solomon implicitly, in viewing “Maggie as Three-Act Drama,” acknowledge the ways in which the theatrical scenes reinforce central themes of the novel, the importance of the concept of spectacle and spectatorship within it, and Crane’s juxtaposing of theatrical illusion and sordid reality. In addition, a more recent critic, David Huntsperger, points out rather accurately that Crane’s own work is “frequently melodramatic” (295), for all the denunciation of the evils of this form. As to employing Maggie as an introduction to different theatrical forms, the various venues the protagonist visits with her lover Pete, and which, according to Solomon, parallel her downfall in their increasing squalor (206-7), display a significant sample of the popular entertainment of the 1890s. There are three chapters making reference to vaudeville shows, composed, as the older name “variety show” suggests, of short performances of various types. These shows became increasingly popular as theater audiences became more specialized in the second half of the

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nineteenth century, and managers attempted to tailor them to suit their audience, sometimes, by “cleaning them up” for a more respectable audience, including women and children (Easton np). This seems to be the case in the first venue the characters visit, where among a working-class crowd Crane points out “[q]uiet Germans, with maybe their wives and two or three children” (28). The show includes a sizeable orchestra, a singer and dancer, a ventriloquist, a “sister act” and a performer who renders “a negro melody” in the minstrel tradition, as well as a rousing patriotic song. All of these are typical end-of-the-century performances, and again can be illustrated with playbills, advertisements, and photographs, and even brief extracts from very early film or voice recordings.4 In Crane’s first music hall, the “risqué” element, to use the fin de siècle term, is toned down, limited to the short skirts and pink stockings of the dancer and to the sisters’ dance (30). On the contrary, the second show, with a much less impressive orchestra, begins with what is essentially a strip-tease act, continuing with a dance in the “leg show” line, and also includes “negro melodies” (52-54). The fact that the audience seems to be composed almost entirely by rowdy, vicious-looking men, with the exceptions of Maggie herself and of the prostitutes she ironically shuns, further marks the difference from the first venue. The last one, where Maggie is abandoned by Pete, seems also to have prostitutes as its only female patrons, and this time the spectacle—a woman singing to an orchestra that plays “in intent fury” (59)— is almost irrelevant, perhaps signaling that any romance that Maggie could have derived from the pleasures of theater-going is about to end. I will return to this theme of spectatorship and romance in a more detailed analysis of chapter 8, where melodrama, the other popular genre which appears in the novel, is presented. For the moment, the criticisms leveled by the narrator at these shows, and at the theatrical illusion as a whole, will be examined. If the narrator’s voice is taken to be representative of Crane’s, it certainly suggests the weight of his family background of Methodist preachers, rather than the fascinated young reporter of the “unrelentingly raucous tenement life in the Bowery,” which, as Kazin suggests, excited Crane precisely because of its theatrical element (viii). Although undoubtedly much of Crane’s criticism is aimed at different issues, it shares with the Puritan tradition its condemnation of the sexual immorality presented onstage, as well as its denunciation of the deep inherent falseness of theatrical practice. Crane’s narrator, as most critics have observed, is much more ironic than objective, and, like many narrators in local-color, Realist and Naturalist fiction, invites the addressee to share his own moral perspective as the source of objectivity. The narrator’s knowing, detached,

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almost blasé attitude when he gives an account of the more sexy acts barely hides the sense that he is denouncing the same exhibitions as the contemporary “moral majority.” He describes the burlesque singer as returning “attired in less gown” and encoring “in still less gown” (52), and sounds even more Victorian in his ironic comment on the short-skirted dancer’s “half a dozen skirts,” pointing out with pedantic primness that “it was patent that any one of them would have proved adequate for the purpose for which skirts were intended” (29-30). Crane’s (narrator’s) taking up of the traditional Puritan claim against the lying nature of theater is more nuanced, as it blends with his defense of Naturalist realism. At one level, he insists on destroying theatrical illusion: the falsity of the actors—the contrast between reality and what they pretend to be—is repeatedly made manifest (29, 30). Crane also points out other devices employed to play on the audience’s response: the introductory music or the “carefully prepared climax” leading to a supposedly spontaneous patriotic response (31). Significantly, he also questions the romance of theater in terms of the audience’s reactions, as these are sometimes presented as equally false, and not always entirely vulnerable to manipulation. Thus, the audience (mostly of foreign birth, as the narrator points out) can be moved to patriotic applause (31) or to frenzied banging of glasses (52, but it is also capable of producing “the kind of applause that rings as sincere” (31) or of completely ignoring a singer that does not please them (53). It is chapter 8 with its references to melodrama that has attracted most critical readings in terms of Crane’s representation of theater. The tragic contrast between Maggie’s own life and what she sees on the stage has been pointed out by most critics. Furthermore, she has already been described in the first beer hall as having a wide-eyed reaction similar to Huck’s at the circus, for instance when she “wonder[s] at the splendor of the costume and los[es] herself in calculation of the cost of the silk and the laces” (30). Thus, Maggie is obviously very vulnerable to the wiles of melodrama, fully identifying with the “dazzling heroine” who is rescued from her “treacherous guardian by the hero with the beautiful sentiments” (35). The fragmentary, metonymic presentations of the plays Maggie and Pete attend make up a composite vision of melodrama that can be illustrated for students with reference to such contemporary hits by American authors as Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859) and Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight (1867). As Huntersperger’s perceptive article points out, Crane’s fictional portrayal hardly exaggerates the maudlin sentimentality, stark moral polarities, and action-packed plots (295)

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of real popular melodramas. Brief plot summaries can be provided, but even a guided viewing of posters announcing these two plays should suffice: the distressed heroine trapped between her two struggling suitors, hero and villain, in The Octoroon, or the dramatic last-minute rescue (in this case, by an atypical heroine) of the hero’s faithful helper, tied to the railway tracks in Under the Gaslight.5 To return to Crane’s vision, his criticism of the melodrama in Maggie insists on the theme of falseness, from the “nickel-plated revolver” drawn by the hero (35) to deeper levels. The plots themselves are implicitly denounced for presenting a manifestly false vision of life, as proved by the contrast with Maggie’s past and future experience, but above all for instilling—like the churches—a false morality unsuitable for the realities of survival in the Naturalist jungle (Pizer 114). Crane’s presentation of spectator reactions here can be used to insist on the theme of the romance of theater, as well as to show the characteristics of Bowery audiences even at the end of the century. The audience are caught up in a mass process of sympathy and identification that Crane views with strong irony, as is evinced by the often quoted phrase that to Maggie and the rest the plays performed are “transcendental realism” (35) and a reflection of their own lives. Their empathy is shown by different modes of intervention, from hissing and applauding to direct vocal encouragement to the hero and insults and curses directed at the villain, a reaction again denounced by Crane as false and hypocritical, as “unmistakably bad men evinced an apparently sincere admiration for virtue” (35-36). What prevails is the contrast between appearance and reality, and the vision of melodrama as a kind of “opium for the people” that brings on a sense of moral smugness and self-pity that contributes to the audience’s self-delusion. Huntsperger opens up the possibility that melodrama could have played a more cathartic function for contemporary audiences by attempting to go beyond the purely ironic reading and suggesting that the working-class audience in their vocal reactions “become participants in a show of class solidarity that is analogous to a labor strike” (295). While I agree that the presentation of the triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his pockets stuffed with bonds (Crane 36)

may have contributed to the creation of class solidarity, the kind of effect that this could have had on the actual conditions of the audience, unlike that of a “labor strike,” seems to be limited.

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Maggie herself, however, not only perceives the play as realistic, but as didactic, offering a model of “culture and refinement” that she wishes to imitate in order to change her life (35). The idea of theater as didactic, a mirror to life, is one of the oldest justifications for its existence: to go no further than the American context, Levine points out that in the eighteenth century Shakespeare’s plays were often presented as “moral dialogue” in order to diminish the authorities’ anti-theatrical prejudice (53). To a certain extent, defenders of realism and naturalism in literature, like Crane himself, in spite of their discourse of objectivity, are aware that realistic works, unlike melodramas, can be at least “consciousness-raising,” to use a thoroughly anachronistic term. From this departure it is possible to introduce some of the late nineteenth-century attempts at creating a more realistic American theater, as discussed for instance in Gary A. Richardson’s chapter “The Development of Realism.” Traditionally, Margaret Fleming (1890), by James A. Herne, “the American Ibsen,” is taken as the first native theatrical manifestation of this movement, in parallel with the staging in the U.S. of European plays in this tradition. However, the resistance of American audiences to this mode can be illustrated with reference to the happy ending tacked on to Ibsen’s The Doll’s House (1879) by William Laurence’s American version, The Child Wife (1883) (Antón-Pacheco 37). Both Thomas A. Gullason, with specific reference to the coexistence of realistic and melodramatic elements in Maggie, and Thomas Postlewait, in a perceptive analysis of the histories of American drama where he questions the exactitude of presenting this history as that of a supposed evolution from melodrama to realism, or of a struggle between the emerging, critical, minority mode of realism and the traditional, uncritical, majority melodrama, provide relevant reminders of the interconnected existence of both modes of representation in this period. This essay, then, suggests some of the ways in which some frequently studied nineteenth-century classic US novels can be used to overcome the limited possibilities which the syllabi of most Spanish universities offer when it comes to studying US theater. Through Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn the overwhelming presence of Shakespeare within the theatrical culture of this period can be introduced. Moby Dick reflects the influence of Shakespeare as a literary model when it comes to the creation of an American hero of tragic scale, but is equally affected by contemporary modes of performing Shakespeare’s plays, and can thus serve as an illustration for this aspect of U.S. drama. The status of Shakespeare as a popular icon, familiar enough to be performed in the smallest rural communities and to be made a subject of humor and parody

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in a juvenile book is clearly apparent in Twain’s novel, which also gives the chance to present other kinds of performance such as the farce and the circus. Maggie offers an opportunity of introducing the significance of melodrama and other popular forms of entertainment, as well as of analyzing the persistent suspicion towards them, and the origins of this prejudice in both Puritan tradition and the new defense of literary Realism. In addition, all of the novels that have been employed illustrate in very marked ways the “romance of theater” in their depiction of enraptured audiences, caught in the fascination of viewing. So hopefully, this opens up a possibility of making U.S. drama a little less “the bastard child,” a little more “legitimate” within the context of formal education, in the same way that it is coming into its full inheritance within the context of presentday criticism.

Works Cited Antón-Pacheco, Ana. El teatro de los Estados Unidos: Historia y crítica. Madrid: Langre, 2005. Bigsby, C.W.E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Vol 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Brockett, Oscar G., and Robert R. Findlay. Century of Innovation. A History of European and American Theatre and Drama since 1870. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973. Burnim, Kalman A. “A Brief Introduction to David Garrick.” Folger Shakespeare Library. 3 October 2012. Butsch, Richard. “Bowery B’hoys and Matinee Ladies: The Re-Gendering of Nineteenth-Century American Theater Audiences.” American Quarterly 46.3 (Sept 1994). 374-405. JSTOR. 1 April 2012. Carlyon, David. “Twain’s ‘Stretcher’: The Circus Shapes Huckleberry Finn.” South Atlantic Review 72.4. (Fall 2007). 1-36. JSTOR. 1 April 2012. Coveney, Peter. Introduction and Notes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. 7-41, 385-94. Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets and Selected Stories. New York: Signet Classics, 1991. [1891, 1893] Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1987. Easton, Rick. Vaudeville! A Dazzling Display of Heterogeneous Splendor. University of Virginia. 12 Nov 2012. Fido, Martin: Oscar Wilde. Leicester: Galley Press, 1988.

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Graves, Wallace. “Mark Twain’s ‘Burning Shame.’” Nineteenth Century Fiction 23.1 (Jun 1968): 63-68. JSTOR. 1 April 2012. Grimsted, David. Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture 1800-1850. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968. Gullason, Thomas. “Tragedy and Melodrama in Stephen Crane’s Maggie.” Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. By Stephen Crane. Ed. Thomas A. Gullason. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1979. 245-253. Huntsperger, David. “Populist Crane: A Reconsideration of Melodrama in Maggie.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 53.3 (Fall 2011). Literature Online. 294-319. Kazin, Alfred. Introduction. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets and Selected Stories. By Stephen Crane. Ed. Alfred Kazin. New York: Signet Classics, 1991. vii-xviii. Levine, Lawrence W. “William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Transformation.” The American Historical Review 89.1 (Feb 1984): 34-66. JSTOR. 1 April 2012. Melville, Herman. “Hawthorne and His Mosses.” The Portable Melville. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1976. [1850] — . Moby Dick. Harmondsworth: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994. [1851] Meserve, Walter J. “The Dramatists and their Plays.” The Revels History of Drama in English. Vol VIII: American Drama. Travis Bogard, Richard Moody and Walter J. Meserve. London: Routledge, 1977. 145-296. Milder, Robert. “Moby Dick: The Rationale of Narrative Form.” Approaches to Teaching Moby Dick. Ed. Martin Bickman. New York: MLA, 1985. 35-49. Overmyer, Janet. “The Structure of Crane’s Maggie.” Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. By Stephen Crane. Ed. Thomas A. Gullason. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1979. 184-185. Pizer, Donald. “Stephen Crane’s Maggie and American Naturalism.” Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Maurice Bassan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-hall, 1967. 110-117. Playbill for whaling ship Alpha, October 1848. Nantucket Historical Association Collection. Shakespeare in American Life. 6 April 2012. Postlewait, Thomas. “From Melodrama to Realism: The Suspect History of American Drama.” Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre. Eds. Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopoulou. London: Macmillan, 1996. 39-60. Richardson, Gary A. American Drama from the Colonial Period through World War I: A Critical History. New York: Twayne, 1993.

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Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Smith, Susan Harris. “Generic Hegemony: American Drama and the Canon.” American Quarterly 41.1 (Mar 1989): 112-122. JSTOR. 12 April 2012. Solomon, Eric. “Maggie as Three-Act Drama.” Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. By Stephen Crane. Ed. Thomas A. Gullason. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1979. 203-209. Thomson, Peter. “Edmund Kean.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-2012. 3 October 2012 Twain, Mark. “Is Shakespeare Dead?” New York: Harper and Brothers, 1909. Project Gutenberg. 21 September 2012. —. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. [1885] Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920. Library of Congress Collection. 12 Nov 2012. Walcutt, Charles Child. Introduction. Moby Dick. By Herman Melville. 1850. New York: Bantam, 1981. xv-xxi. Wiggins, Robert A. “Mark Twain and the Drama.” American Literature 25.3 (Nov 1953). 279-286. JSTOR. 1 April 2012. Wilde. Directed by Brian Gilbert. Madrid: Manga Films, 2000. [1997]

CHAPTER THREE THE INFLUENCE OF WHITE CULTURE ON THE SIOUX GHOST DANCE OF 1890 JOSHUA E. POLSTER EMERSON COLLEGE

Maka’ sito’maniyan ukiye Oya’te uki’ye, oya’te uki’ye Wa’nbali oya’te wan hoshi’hi-ye lo, Ate heye lo, ate heye lo, Maka o’wanch’ya ukiya, pte kin ukiye, Pte kin ukiye, pte kin ukiye Kanghi oya’te wan hoshi’hi-ye lo, A’te he’ye lo, a’te he’ye lo. The whole world is coming, A nation is coming, a nation is coming, The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe. The father says so, the father says so. Over the earth they are coming. The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming, The Crow has brought the message to the tribe, The father says so, the father says so. Sioux Ghost Dance Song (qtd. in Mooney 1072)

The Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony was a theatrical performance of the 1890 Ghost Dance Religion. The songs, dances, artifacts—all of the components in the ceremony—represented Sioux concerns, people, and way of life. Their culture, however, did not rest in isolation; it was affected by outside forces, specifically the growing influence of White society. White military imperialism and evangelism had an increasing presence in and effect on Native American lives in the late 1800s. The US government’s forced relocation of the Sioux to reservations—where starvation, disease, psychological abuse and moral decline were rampant—

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created the need for a revitalization movement, which resulted in the Ghost Dance Religion. The Ghost Dance Ceremony was a performance method to reclaim their Sioux identity, as well as their land, natural resources and people. Interestingly, their method of cultural salvation was not solely Indian, but rather an intercultural design that combined Indian beliefs and traditions with many Christian beliefs and traditions— particularly of the Mormon and Shaker religions. The Sioux nation in the late 1800s was a culture under stress. In 1868, the Sioux agreed to the Laramie Treaty, which exchanged portions of their land for desperately needed food and supplies, and included an agreement for them to live only on land allotted by the US government. In 1889, the Sioux Act cut that allotted land in half, and the largest tribe in the United States was forced onto five reservations in South Dakota—Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Lower Brule, Rosebud, and Pine Ridge. The Sioux, who were traditionally a nomadic hunting tribe, were forced to give up hunting and instead turn to farming and raising cattle (Brown 416-417). This was one disruption to their food source, among many, that led to extreme cases of hunger among the Sioux. In 1885, for instance, the US government had decreased the disbursement of beef to the Sioux after taking a census of the tribe in that same year. This census, unfortunately, occurred before a severe winter in 1886, when thirty percent of their remaining cattle died from disease. In 1888, the Sioux experienced a disastrous crop failure and were in desperate need of food. The Sioux became increasingly dependent on government rations at a time when it was decreasing its disbursements (Briggs 2). By the end of the 1880s, there were high levels of anger, frustration and despair among the Sioux over their seemingly hopeless situation. In addition to the cattle and crop failures, missionaries on the reservations were destroying Sioux culture by teaching them that their old ways were superstitious and primitive. The next generation of Sioux were not learning the history, the language, the way of their people, but were being sent to Christian schools for a “proper” education. A White “cultural bomb” was dropped on the Sioux Indians. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan novelist and playwright, explains: The effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is farthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other people’s languages rather than their own. (qtd. in Worthen 781)

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As a result, social and cultural stress, psychological brainwashing and moral decline pervaded the Sioux reservations. Their culture was dying fast and some form of hope was quickly needed for survival. Hope came to the Sioux nation in the form of a revitalization movement. According to anthropologist Anthony Wallace, when a society is placed under circumstances of anomie and pervasive factionalism, a new religious movement is very likely to develop, led by a prophet who has undergone an ecstatic revelation (comparable to becoming a shaman), and aimed at the dual goal of providing new and more effective rituals of salvation and of creating a new and more satisfying culture (158).

Around 1890, Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota leader of the Sioux nation, sent Kicking Bull, Short Bull, and other Sioux delegates to investigate a new messiah preaching on the Walker River Paiute Indian Reservation in western Nevada. Word of the messiah quickly spread through Indian missionaries and, ironically, through White missionary and government assimilation schools, where the teaching of English was breaking down tribal language barriers, making the news of the messiah more accessible (Schaefer 174-175). The name of the messiah was Wovoka, a Paiute Indian medicine man who preached the doctrine of a revitalization movement called the Ghost Dance Religion, which integrated Indian spirituality with Christianity, specifically Mormon and Shaker beliefs. Wovoka, born around 1860, was the son of Tavibo, a Paiute shaman who was a disciple of the prophet Wodzibob. Wodzibob was the founder of the 1870 Ghost Dance Religion, which believed that a great earthquake would swallow up all of humanity and only the Indians who believed in the religion would be resurrected. Wovoka received the White name of Jack Wilson while living with his father’s employers, the Wilson family, after his father died around 1870. It was at the Wilson ranch where Wovoka first learned the traditions and beliefs of Christianity, which he would later use to restructure the 1870 Ghost Dance and create the 1890 Ghost Dance Religion (Hittman 86). The young Indian, accepted into the house, was thus exposed to some religious teaching through family Bible reading, evening prayers, grace before meals, and similar family devotions. Indeed, some particular effort was made by the lady of the house to read to the boy some of the better known Bible stories. What he heard he may not have thoroughly understood but he was vastly interested and impressed. (Dyer 2-3)

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According to Wovoka, he received a prophecy around 1889, when he was sick with fever. He visited the spirit world where he saw God and all of the Indians who had previously died. God told Wovoka that if the Indians followed specific moral codes and practiced the Ghost Dance, then the new Indian millennium would come—a time when the Whites would no longer be on the earth, the land would be replenished with buffalo and other game, and departed ancestors and great Indian leaders would return. Wovoka’s revivalistic prophecy focused on two objectives—restoring the Indian’s golden age before the emergence of the Whites, and expelling the Whites from their culture. Wovoka’s spiritual message, however, did not advocate violence; it spoke of living in harmony with fellow Indians and living peacefully and patiently with the Whites until the new millennium occurred (Thornton 1-3). Wovoka recounted his prophecy to his followers: All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come. He bring back all game of every kind. The game be thick everywhere. All dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, then all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can’t hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood comes like water and all white people die, get drowned. After that, water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick. Then medicine man tell Indians to send word to all Indians to keep up dancing and the good time will come. Indians who don’t dance, who don’t believe in the word, will grow little, just about a foot high, and stay that way. Some of them will be turned into wood and be burned in fire. (qtd. in Brown 416)

When Kicking Bull, Short Bull and the other Sioux delegates returned from their visit with Wovoka, they brought back to Sitting Bull a message that was different than Wovoka’s peaceful doctrine. They reinterpreted Wovoka’s spiritual message into one that was more militant and antiWhite. It reflected the growing anger of the Sioux, who recently had been forcefully relocated to reservations in South Dakota where famine and illnesses were spreading. The reinterpretation of Wovoka’s prophecy also reflected the Sioux’s belief that they could still defeat the Whites; they were the largest Plains tribe at 25,000, and their great Sioux victory over General Custer and his 7th Calvary at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 was still fresh in their minds (Briggs 5). What came from the Sioux’s reinterpretation was a Ghost Dance Ceremony that was more hostile and combative than the ceremonies of other Indian nations at that time. By 1890, the Sioux Indians along with approximately sixty-five percent of the

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other western tribes were participating in Wovoka’s revitalization movement (Schaefer 174-175). Many cultures under stress have some form of a religious revitalization movement (for example, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and these cultures, according to anthropologists Clement Meighan and Francis Riddell, often share similar characteristics. The first one is that after two cultures make contact, one of them emerges as politically and economically superior. Second, a prophet comes forth from the inferior group and preaches and spreads a new religion based on visions of the superior group’s demise. Third, supernatural forces help punish or destroy the superior group. Fourth, the old and better life of the inferior culture is returned (dead ancestors, depleted resources and stolen belongings commonly come back). Fifth, supernatural forces protect the inferior group. Sixth, there is an increase and spread of converts of the new religion, and, last, religious ceremonies are performed in the community. The Sioux exhibited all seven of these traits in the revitalization movement of their Ghost Dance Religion. Similar to the Sioux, the Mormons were another example of an oppressed messianic religion that showed many of these characteristics. As a result, a unique connection occurred between the Sioux and Mormons, as well as a cross-fertilization of cultural traditions and rituals (Meighan 7-8). In 1831, Joseph Smith founded the Church of the Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ, whose followers were known as Mormons. Included in Smith’s prophecies was the belief that those who had faith in his church would come together and create a New Jerusalem in the desert. Among the faithful were the lost Hebrew tribes of Israel who, Smith believed, were the Indians. Throughout the 1800s, the Mormons sent evangelists to the Indians to convert them and make Smith’s prophecy come true. This contact greatly influenced the Indian messianic movement. The most striking example of this influence can be seen in Smith’s prophecy of 1843 which stated that the messiah would come to regenerate the earth and resurrect the dead when Smith turned eighty-five, which was the year 1890. This messiah, the Mormons believed, was Wovoka (Farb 280). When news of Wovoka spread to the Mormons, they eagerly accepted him as the fulfillment of Smith’s prophecy. The fact that Wovoka was an Indian did not concern the Mormons; it made perfect sense to them. The Mormons rejected the commonly held White view of Indians as savages and, instead, believed that the Indians were the noble and sacred lost Hebraic tribe. This perspective on the Indian’s identity was unique during the nineteenth century and, as a result, caused the Mormons great

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difficulty. Wilford Woodruff, the Mormon president at the end of the nineteenth century, wrote the following: Thus ends the year 1889 and the word of the prophet Joseph Smith is beginning to be fulfilled that the whole nation would turn against Zion and make war upon the Saints. The nation has never been filled so full of lies against the Saints as today, 1890 will be an important year with the Latter Day Saints and the American Nation [Indians]. (qtd. in Van Wagoner 139)

The lies Woodruff mentioned were the portrayals of the relationship between the Mormons and Indians by the press and US government throughout the nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, there circulated unsubstantiated rumors that the Mormons were responsible for the increase of Indian uprisings. As a result, the US government, who also believed that the Mormons were trying to encourage the Indians to wage war against Whites, used military force to threaten the Mormon missionaries to leave Indian reservations. During the summer of 1846 Fort Leavenworth and the Missouri outposts heard that the Mormons were fortifying themselves somewhere up the river and preaching “Jewish powwow” to the Indians, that they were distributing arms and inciting the tribes to a holy war, that they were on their way to Oregon to join forces with the British. No one knew exactly where they [the Mormons] were or what they were doing; therefore they seemed doubly dangerous. (Qtd. in Stegner 75)

The press and the US government during the nineteenth century portrayed the colonized Indians as the Other, the inferior primitive culture. The indigenous cultures were seen as noncivil, their languages nonliterary, their cultures noncultivated, their (nonwhite) peoples nonpeople. (Worthen 781)

One explanation for this ideological polarity is that the US needed to dehumanize the Indians in order to justify and continue their violent colonization and exploitation (Roach 467). “In this narrative,” observed theatre historian Joseph Roach, “the role of the aboriginal is to disappear [resulting in] the vanishing of the Other” (465). In 1867, the Weekly Leader in Topeka, Kansas reported: [The Indians are] a set of miserable, dirty, lousy, blanketed, thieving, lying, sneaking, murdering, graceless, faithless, gut-eating skunks as the

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Lord ever permitted to infect the earth, and whose immediate and final extermination of all men, except Indian agents and traders, should pray for. (Qtd. in Spencer 509)

An additional reason for portraying the Indian as the Other was the construction and preservation of the United States’s cultural image. The United States at the end of the nineteenth century was still a young and developing country. In order to affirm its sense of cultural identity and strength, it contrasted its “civilized” nature to the “primitive” nature of the Indians. US power and dominance created a structural relationship of cultural hegemony. The Mormon perspective of the Indians upset the United State’s portrayal. To recognize the Indians as the lost tribe of Israel would disrupt the portrayal of Indians as savages, and, therefore, would disrupt not only US imperial conquest, but also its own image as a nation. The portrayal and treatment of Sioux Indians by Whites are what anthropologist Victor Turner would describe as a social drama. A social drama is an objectively isolable sequence of social interactions of a conflictive, competitive or agonistic type [which] may provide materials for many stories depending upon the social-structural, political, psychological, philosophical, and, sometimes, theological perspectives of the narrators. (33)

The interaction between Sioux and Whites created a cultural conflict that in turn could create a cultural performance, in this case the Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony. According to Turner, social dramas commonly had four main phases of public action: Breech, Crisis, Redressive Action, and Reintegration or Schism. Turner’s four-phase construct of public action neatly fits the Sioux Indians. Breech occurred when Whites made first contact and threatened the stability of Sioux Indians. Crisis occurred when Whites extended the Breech and increased the threat to Sioux stability by escalating the violent imperial conquests, cultural assimilation, and destruction of natural resources essential to the Sioux. The Redressive Action phase was the Ghost Dance Ceremony, a liminoid ritual where the Sioux attempted to prevent the spread of the Breech and create the final phase of Reintegration. Reintegration for Sioux was when Whites would leave the earth and Sioux culture and land would be restored to how they were before their first contact with Whites.

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Performance Studies scholar Richard Schaefer added that in the Redressive Action phase there is a strong relationship between the staged drama and the social drama: [The] visible actions of any given social drama are informed, shaped, guided and remembered by aesthetic principles and performance/ rhetorical devices. Reciprocally, a culture’s visible aesthetic practices are informed, shaped and guided and remembered by the processes of social interaction (68)

Sioux Indians believed that the staged cultural performance of the Ghost Dance would affect their social drama. The Ghost Dance Ceremony, therefore, was a means for the Sioux to attempt to take control of their situation and restore their world. Schaefer also pointed out that the social drama also affected the staged drama. The following section reasserts how the social drama of Sioux Indians and Whites affected the staged drama of the Ghost Dance Ceremony and created an intercultural performance that presented both Sioux and White culture. The Ghost Dance Ceremony was originally performed only once a week on Sundays, starting in the morning, afternoon or evening. As the conditions on the reservations worsened and the desperate hope in the revitalization movement increased, Sioux began to practice the dance ceremony more frequently. Before the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, the Sioux were performing the ceremony as often as three times a day. The violent imperialism and assimilation practices by Whites accelerated the practice of the Ghost Dance Ceremony (Briggs 5). The Ghost Dance Ceremony had several preparatory stages that reflected more traditional Indian rituals. The day before the Ghost Dance, the male dance leaders would fast. On the morning of the dance, the medicine man prepared the consecrated ground by praying and scattering holy powder around the sacrifice tree. The sacrifice tree was an offering to the Great Spirit. It was positioned in the center of the circle of tents and decorated with feathers, stuffed animals, differently colored strips of cloth, pouches of tobacco, claws and horns, and other religious offerings to the Great Spirit. (A pine tree was often used, perhaps because it was an evergreen that symbolized continuous life.) On the same day, the male dancers would take a sweat-bath, purifying themselves in a blanketcovered, dome-shaped hut where water was poured on hot stones, brought by the medicine man, to create the steam. After the men were purified, they immersed themselves in a nearby stream. Then, dancers prepared to dress themselves (Smith 83-84).

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In The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, anthropologist James Mooney recorded the importance of the Ghost shirts worn by male dancers. These shirts were used as outer garments during the dance and were believed to be a gift from the Great Spirit to protect Sioux from the bullets of Whites. To possess the magic of the Ghost shirt, dancers had to believe in its power. Wovoka denied any responsibility for the idea of the Ghost shirts, claiming that his message was one of peace and did not mention any war-like protective clothing (Mooney 791). The appearance of the Ghost shirts, in color and design, varied depending on the particular tribe and dancer. All ghost shirts were made of white cotton cloth due to the increasingly scarce supply of buckskin from White sport hunting and trading. Z.A. Parker, a teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation who observed a Sioux Ghost Dance in 1890, described the Ghost shirts, which was recorded in the Annual Report of the Commissioner from the Bureau of Indian Affairs: [The male Ghost dancers had] …shirts and leggings painted in red [Wovoka’s sacred red paint which was imported from Nevada]. Some of the leggings were painted in stripes running up and down, others running around. The shirt was painted blue around the neck, and the whole garment was fantastically sprinkled with figures of birds, bows and arrows, sun, moon, and stars, and everything they saw in nature. Down the outside of the sleeve were rows of feathers tied by the quill ends and left to fly in the breeze, and also a row around the neck and up and down the outside of the leggings. (Qtd. in United States 530)

The feathers Parker mentioned were most likely from the eagle and the crow, two animals sacred to Sioux Indians. (The eagle was often considered the communicative link between Man and God and because of this, it was believed that its feathers could cure illnesses.) In addition to the Ghost shirts, male dancers wore stuffed animals such as birds and squirrels tied in their hair along with more feathers from the eagle and crow. Also, male dancers painted their faces and bodies with symbols. Their faces were commonly painted red with a black half-moon on their cheek or forehead (United States 530). Female dancers also wore a protective garb made of cotton cloth called the Ghost dress. Parker described their dress as being cut like their ordinary dress, a loose robe with wide, flowing sleeves, painted blue in the neck, in the shape of a three-cornered handkerchief, with moon, stars, birds, etc, interspersed with real feathers, painted on the waist and sleeves. (United States Qtd. in 529-531)

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Women, in addition to the Ghost dresses, wore shawls wrapped around their waists and feathers tied in their hair (United States 530). In Mimesis and Alterity, anthropologist Michael Taussig discussed humanity’s mimetic faculty, the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other (xiii).

Mimesis, Taussig observed, has the ability to draw out the power of the original to the point that “the representation may even assume that character and that power” (xiii). In the case of Sioux Indians, the artifacts of the Ghost Dance were staged accessories, but they represented the spiritual world, which to them was real. The decorative clothing of feathers and painted symbols such as the moon and stars can be seen as their attempt to mimic the spirits in order to call on their powers of strength, wisdom and protection. According to Mooney, the concept of protective clothing did not exist in Sioux culture prior to the Ghost Dance. “War shirts” in Sioux tradition were more for ceremonial purposes and were not worn during battle. The Sioux desired their bodies to be as unencumbered as possible in order to allow more freedom to move in combat. It was more common for a Sioux to be naked from the waist up when in combat. Protection came in the form of war paint and small objects, such as feathers, bags of sacred powder, and/or sacred parts of an animal, which were attached to their hair and/or shields (790). The idea of protective clothing was a borrowed concept, possibly originating from the Mormons, which passed down from various tribes to the Sioux. Many tribes neighboring the Sioux were influenced and evangelized by Mormons, who had a strong presence in the West. Each Indian initiated into the Mormon Church was often given an undergarment called an Endowment Garment, which symbolized his/her faith in the Mormon religion. Like the Ghost shirt, it was symbolically decorated and believed to make its wearer invulnerable. Mormon converts and influential contacts included the Ute, Bannock, Shoshoni, Paiute (Wovoka’s tribe in western Nevada), and Arapaho, who were fervent practitioners of the Ghost Dance (a peaceful version) and who were frequently visited by the Sioux. Theatre historian Marvin Carlson observed that intercultural performances display a variety of relationships between cultures. One example of these relationships is when a culture makes “the foreign into a new blend with familiar elements” (Worthen 795). Many of the Whites’

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influences were adapted into the Sioux’s familiar customs, consciously or unconsciously. The main stages of the Ghost Dance Ceremony, for example, reveal how the Sioux took familiar elements from their culture and components from the White culture to create a new blend. The word “blend” is not to be understood as making the elements from the two cultures indistinguishable from each other, but two recognizable parts that have come together. There were six main stages of the Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony: Gathering, Praying, Naming the Dead, Dancing, Entrancing, and Recounting (Mooney 915-927). The first part of the ceremony happened when the community was alerted and gathered together to begin the dance. A medicine man with about fifteen other dance leaders—people who previously had visited the spirit world—met at the consecrated ground around the sacrifice tree, where they began to chant and march around the tents that were arranged in a circle surrounding the tree. It is interesting to note that before participating in the dance, Sioux Indians attempted to discard all material objects that were made by Whites. (However, several pictures of extant staffs reveal Ghost staffs with decorative beads, and the Sioux sometimes carried metal guns during the dance as a sign of militancy.) Their march symbolized that this space was their space, a reclaimed and imaginary “continent, from which the white man and his culture have vanished or retreated to the peripheries” (Roach 478). Gradually, other members of the community—men, women, children, the elderly and the sick—joined in the march. The sick believed that the Ghost Dance also had a healing power that would cure the faithful participants who went into a trance. The main leader of the march, who was generally a high priest, asked the congregation (of as many as four hundred people) to sit down by the sacrifice tree, where he then began to instruct the participants about the ceremony (United States 529-531). After the leader finished his instructions, the dancers stood up and formed a line facing the sun to begin the second stage, Praying. The leader stood in front of the dancers and, while praying, waved the Ghost staff over their heads. The Ghost staff, which symbolized the power to grow, generally was six feet tall and decorated with red cloth and feathers, with buffalo horns on top and a cow’s tail on the bottom. The leader then turned to the sun and continued to pray. After he finished, the dancers themselves prayed, turned toward the tree and formed a circle around it (United States 529-531). As the dancers prayed, a woman stood by the sacrifice tree and held a pipe symbolizing peace and truth to the sun and to Wovoka in the west. Next to her stood another woman who carried a bow and four bone-headed

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arrows covered in steer blood (on some occasions, the points of the arrows were removed). From the center of the circle, the arrows were shot into the air in the direction of the four cardinal points and then were gathered and hung with the bow and Ghost staff on the sacrificial tree. A third woman, also in the center of the circle, held the gaming wheel and sticks, which symbolized the revival of old-time games. The wheel also represented, like the circle of dancers surrounding it and the circle of tents surrounding the dancers, the universe in which all people were connected. The gaming wheel and sticks were also hung on the sacrifice tree (Mooney 915-916). Praying was a way for the Sioux to address the Great Spirit. Religions commonly use prayer as a means of asking or thanking a supernatural being for a blessing. Prayers can also be embodied in objects, such as in the Sioux gaming wheel. An additional reason for prayer is to speak to the dead. The Sioux, for example, used prayer to help them make contact with their departed ancestors (Wallace 53-54). The next stage of the Ghost Dance Ceremony was the Naming the Dead. In this phase, each of the dancers stood behind one another and placed his/her hand on the shoulder of the person directly in front of them. They walked and chanted “Father, I come” [translated] a couple of times around the circle. The dancers then stopped walking and, remaining in the circle formation, started “crying, moaning, groaning, and shrieking out their grief” while calling out the names of their dead ancestors and friends (United States 530). Naming the Dead was a way for Sioux Indians to keep their ancestors and old ways of life alive. (A tangible example of this is the Northwest Indian Hamsamala cannibal dance where the Hamatsas, or cannibal dancers, would eat the remains of their blood relatives to keep the old spirits alive.) While dancers called out the names of their ancestors, they picked up surrounding dust, washed their hands in it and then threw it over their heads. They then clasped their hands over their heads, looked toward heaven and asked the Great Spirit to give them the opportunity to talk with their departed ancestors. After about fifteen minutes, everyone sat down and comforted and assured each other about the coming of the messiah (United States 529-531). Dancers then stood up, ready to begin the fourth stage, the Ghost Dance. They held each other’s hands and started moving around the circle. They sang in rhythm to the dance steps, moving and swaying their bodies with increasing speed and excitement around the circle (the songs purposely began at a faster tempo to accelerate the trance process). Soon, they were dancing as fast as possible, creating a dust storm from the kicked up earth. When a dancer grew tired or was about to fall, the

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neighboring dancers would help the person back into position (unless that person was ready to go into a trance). As they moved around the circle, dancers would repeatedly chant in a monotonous voice, “Father, I come; Mother, I come; Brother, I come: Father, give us back our arrows” [translated] as dancers gradually went into a trance (United States 529531). The bodily movements of Sioux dancers signified their culture. Ethnographer Dwight Conquergood, in his study of Hmong shamanism, observed how the social experiences of a culture are signified on the natural body. He quoted anthropologist Mary Douglas who agreed that “most symbolic behavior must work through the human body” and there is a strong tendency to replicate the social situation in symbolic form by drawing richly on bodily symbols in every possible dimension. (44)

If this theory is applied to the Sioux Ghost Dance, then the intense, accelerated and seemingly chaotic (“seemingly” because the majority of the movements of the Ghost Dance were choreographed and in a controlled environment) movements of the dancers can be seen as signifying the unstable state of their culture. The fifth part of the Ghost Dance Ceremony was Entrancing. In the middle of the circle of dancers was a person in charge of leading them into an entranced state, where they would visit the spirit world. This leader, according to Mooney, used the techniques of a hypnotist. The Sioux, however, did not see the person as a hypnotist, but as a passive instrument of the Great Spirit who helped his people reach the spirit world. Any person—man or woman—who previously had been in a trance could take on the role. In other words, a specific rank or position in the community was not required in order to guide the dancers into a trance. The trance guide held an eagle feather, scarf and/or handkerchief of any color. The trance guide carefully watched the dancers for beginning signs of going into a trance, such as slight involuntary shakings of the muscles. Women were generally more susceptible to going into trances (they were affected three times more than men) and were almost always the first to do so. As soon as the trance guide noticed a sign in one of the dancers, he would immediately go to her and help bring her to the spirit world (Mooney 925). Staring intensely into her eyes, the trance guide slowly moved along with the circle of dancers while quickly moving the feather, handkerchief and/or scarf in a circular motion in front of her eyes. The woman’s eyes watched the trance guide’s hand motions. At the same time, he repeatedly chanted the short staccato sounds of “Hu! Hu! Hu!” The trance guide

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would then move the feather, handkerchief and/or scarf in an upward and downward motion in front of her eyes while she continued to sing and dance around the circle. Eventually, the woman’s words became incomprehensible, and she underwent a series of more intense muscular tremors, losing control of herself, and finally breaking away from the circle and stumbling into the circle where the trance guide was waiting for her (Mooney 925). As soon as a person broke the circle, the other dancers reconnected the circle and took precautions not to disturb the entranced person, who was considered to be in the spirit world talking to the dead. Once in the circle, the woman moaned while her body stood still and rigid with her eyes either closed or opened and motionless. If the dance was performed during the day, the trance guide would position the woman so the sunlight would shine on her face. After some time, her body went heavy and fell into a state of unconsciousness that could last from a couple of minutes to several hours. After the woman went unconscious, the trance guide would then turn his attention to the next dancer who showed the signs of going into a trance. As the dance continued, numerous people could be inside of the circle in various stages of the trance (Mooney 922-926). The entrancing techniques used by the Sioux during the Ghost Dance possible came from the Shaker Religion. In 1881, Squ-sacht-un, also known as John Slocum, of the Squaxin tribe in the Puget Sound area of Washington, went into a trance and, like Wovoka, visited heaven. While there, Squ-sacht-un was prevented from going any further into heaven by an angel who said he was too wicked. The angel told Squ-sacht-un to go either to hell or back to his people and tell them what they had to do in order to pass into heaven. Squ-sacht-un chose the latter and preached what became the Shaker Religion, a religion that combined Indian with Protestant and Catholic traditions that had been taught to Squ-sacht-un by missionaries. The Shakers received their name from their practice of shaking their bodies to reach a trance state (Spier 49). Louis Yowaluch, the chief high priest of Squ-sacht-un, was known for the hypnotizing techniques he performed on his patients, which brought them to a state of violent shaking. His followers were called Shapupulemas, or “blowers,” because when they would meet people, they would gently wave a hand in front of the people’s faces and then blow on them to “blow away” their badness: Their treatment consisting chiefly of hypnotic performances over the patient the “blowers” usually gather around him in a circle to the number of about twelve, dressed in very attractive ceremonial costume, and each wearing on his head a sort of crown of woven cedar bark, in which are

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fixed two lighted candles, while in his right hand he carries a small cloth, and in the left hand another lighted candle…While the leader is going through his hypnotic performance over the patient the others are waving the cloths and swinging in circles the candles held in their hands. (Qtd. in Mooney 761)

The parallels to the Ghost Dance are clear. Instead of a priest, the leader of the Ghost Dance was generally a medicine man who was also aided by about twelve to fifteen people dressed in ceremonial clothing. They all gathered in a circle around the person who would be brought into the trance state. The Shapupu Lemas’ techniques of waving a cloth in front of a person’s face and using lighting was also seen in each performance of the Ghost Dance. (Instead of using candles, the Ghost dancers used the light of the sun.) Finally, when the patient became entranced, he, like the Ghost dancer, went through an involuntary shaking of the muscles that lead into more violent spasms, then rigidity, and then a state of unconsciousness (Qtd. in Mooney 926). During Wovoka’s time with the Walkers, he was exposed to the Shaker Religion as well as the Mormon Religion. Wovoka traveled in the 1880s throughout Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington when the Walker River Paiutes were contracted to work in these areas. It is said among the northern Indians that on this journey these apostles [Shakers] met somewhere in the south [of Oregon], a young man to whom they taught their mysteries, in which he became such an apt pupil that he soon outstripped his teachers, and is now working even greater wonders among his own people. (Qtd. in Mooney 763)

The last stage of the Ghost Dance was Recounting. Ghost dancers generally kept dancing until as many as a hundred people were unconscious. Then, the remaining dancers stopped and seated themselves in a circle and waited for the fallen dancers to join the circle. When the entranced dancers gradually regained consciousness, they went through stages similar to going into the trance: violent tremors went through their bodies, they started moaning, and then they sat up in a stupor while still undergoing involuntary muscular shakes. After fully regaining consciousness, the dancers rejoined the circle, where they recounted their experiences in the spirit world in the form of a song to the leader and to the rest of the dancers. Dancers would then, after resting for a certain amount of time, go through the ceremony again, sometimes as often as three times a day (United States 531).

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Each Sioux tribe had their own Ghost Dance songs that were specifically created from their ceremonies. The content of the songs had a mixture of the teachings of Wovoka, tribal mythologies, nostalgic references to the old life before the Whites, and the recounting of their experiences in the spirit world. The new songs were then sung at proceeding ceremonies until replaced by newer songs produced the same way. If a particular song was popular, the Sioux would continue to use the song for several dances. Sometimes a single dancer who went through multiple trances created a series of songs with a common theme. One Ghost Dance alone could produce twenty to thirty new songs (Qtd. in Mooney 922-926). The production of creating songs was a common result of social dramas. As stated earlier by Turner, the social dramas provided “materials for many stories” (3). The following was a popular song sung by the Sioux during several of their ceremonies. It was originally recounted by a young woman who went into a trance and saw her mother in the spirit world. While walking out of the trance she sang a song that begged her mother to come back to them because her little brother missed her. Ina’ he’kuwo’; ina’ he’kuwo. Misu’nkala che’yaya oma’ni-ye, Misu’nkala che’yaya oma’ni-ye, Ina’ he’kuwo’; ina’ he’kuwo. Mother, come home; mother, come home. My little brother goes about always crying, My little brother goes about always crying, Mother, come home; mother come home. (Qtd. in Mooney 1070)

Songs were a way for Sioux Indians, who had a rich oral tradition, to maintain their history. Dance and Theatre scholar Ann Cooper Albright noted, in her book Choreographing Difference, that, Giving testimony and bearing witness by recounting one’s life experiences has helped marginalized communities hold onto the experience of their own bodies while reclaiming their history. (149)

Songs were a way to keep the Sioux Indian’s past, present and future alive. They confirmed and emphasized the complete cycle and continuity of Sioux life, despite the fact that, at the same time, Whites were attempting to destroy it.

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The Sioux Ghost Dance Ceremony of 1890, therefore, was a result of the growing and destructive influence of White militancy and evangelism; it was a performance method to save Sioux culture. According to Jean Paul Sartre, the descent of a person occurs when his sense of self is determined by another person’s view of him. Sioux Indians lost their sense of self under the gaze of Whites. Unfortunately, the Sioux Ghost Dance of 1890 would not be enough to save the Sioux from the fate that awaited them—the fate that would further devastate their culture and cause many of them to abandon the Ghost Dance Religion forever—the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Works Consulted Albright, Ann Cooper. Choreographing Difference: the Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997. Barney, Garold. Mormons, Indians and the Ghost Dance Religion of 1890. Hanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986. Briggs, Marion and Sarah McAnulty. The Ghost Dance Tragedy at Wounded Knee. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1977. Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1970. Byte, E.T. The Bear’s Byte. 15 Mar. 2004 http://www.thebearbyte.com/Stories/ GhostDanceMovement1890.htm Conquergood, Dwight, Paja Thao and Xa Thao. I am a Shaman: a Hmong Life Story with Ethnographic Commentary. Minneapolis: Southeast Asian Refugee Studies Project, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota, 1989. Dyer, Edward. Wizardry. Manuscript, Property of Special Collections, Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada, n.d. Farb, Peter. “Societies Under Stress.” Man’s Rise to Civilization. New York: E.P. Dulton, 1968. 280-288. Hittman, Michael and Don Lynch. Wovaka and the Ghost Dance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Joseph, Robert. “Behind the Mask.” Down from the Shimmering Sky: Masks of the Northwest Coast. Ed. Peter Macnair, Robert Joseph and Bruce Grenville. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Meighan, Clement and Francis Riddell. The Maru Cult of the Pomo Indians; A California Ghost Dance Survival. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1972.

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Miller, David Humphreys. Ghost Dance. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959. Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965. Murphy, Brenda. Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film, and Television. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Powell, J.W. Bureau of American Ethnology. Pt. 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898. Roach, Joseph. “Mardi Gras Indians and Others: Genealogies of American Performance.” Theatre Journal. 44 (1992): 461-483. Schaefer, Richard. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 9th ed. New Jersey: PearsonPrentice Hall, 2004. Smith, Rex Alan. Moon of Popping Trees. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975. Spencer, Robert and Jesse Jennings. “American Indian Heritage.” The Native American. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. 499. Spier, Leslie. The Prophet Dance of the Northwest and its Derivatives: The Source of the Ghost Dance. Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1935. Stegner, Wallace. Mormon Country. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1942. Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge, 1993. Thornton, Russell. We Shall Live Again. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ, 1986. United States, Bureau of Indian Affairs. “Report of the Superintendent of Indian Schools”. Annual Report of the Commissioner, Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior. Vol. I. Washington: US G.P.O., 1891. Utley, Robert. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978. Van Wagoner, Richard. Mormon Polygamy: A History. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986. Vestal, Stanley. New Sources of Indian History 1850- 1891. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934. Wallace, Anthony. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House, 1966. Worthen, W.B. The Harcourt Anthology of Drama. Brief Edition. Fortworth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2002.

CHAPTER FOUR INTRACULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN AFRICAN AMERICAN DRAMA: FROM PRE-EMANCIPATION TO EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY1 JOCELYN A. BROWN GLOBAL VILLAGE ACADEMY

African American drama and theatrical presentations in antebellum and postbellum America have been one of the means of social protest in an effort to voice frustrations against the social wrongdoings of White America. Certainly, there were overt protests by abolitionists, both African American and White American, in the north through oral and written means during slavery. Following emancipation and throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, small African American newspaper presses sprang up that gave voice to the devastating White American backlash against an emerging population of African American businesses. The dramatic writings of the time, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century and just after the turn of the twentieth century, by authors such as William Wells Brown, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Katherine D. Chapman Tillman, Mary Burill, and Joseph Cotter, protested against slavery, lynching, business swindles, and other unsavory practices from which African Americans suffered at the hands of Whites. As White America witnessed a burgeoning African American community of former slaves, determined to become established economically, resentment grew. Increasing pressure and violence was applied to keep African Americans from owning land, opening businesses, and becoming economically independent. At that time, a number of African American dramatists began writing about the conditions under which they were placed. More importantly, they began writing about African American solidarity, self-empowerment, and ways in which intra-

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cultural communication and pooled efforts would help the race reach a place of social and economic stasis. The focus of African American drama was two-fold; protest against White America and inter-dependence among African Americans. African American drama, before and just after the turn of the nineteenth century, was not abundant, but it undoubtedly contributed indirectly to the formation of an African American consciousness during a turbulent time. African American drama has always been political; a reaction to the social events of the period. Its themes have most often been directed toward intercultural protest, intra-cultural protest, or both. Genevieve Fabre asserts that African Americans have been and are pulled between two opposing forces—the need for integration and the need for autonomy. She further posits that in African American theatrical expression, “This legitimate desire for integration runs counter to the objective of freedom” (31). The intercultural (between Black America and White America) collision over social and economic dependence and basic freedom characterized pre-emancipation African American drama, but is joined more intensively by a voice of intra-cultural (between Black Americans) dialogue by the end of the century and throughout the early next century. Social occurrences developing between those periods shaped the voice and focus of African American drama. The immediate post-slavery period found emancipated slaves struggling to survive against tremendous odds and confused allegiances. However, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century African Americans had established viable businesses and began to thrive on all levels. The period became a prosperous time in African American lives (a condition that would not be seen again until the mid-twentieth century), until the rise of White backlash in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, and popular literature and drama at the beginning of the new century. By the turn of the century a new African American consciousness had arisen. David Krasner describes the period in the following passage: Black theatre from 1895 to 1910 in particular existed during a period of racial turmoil. ... White racism and the Black solidarity that opposed it both played a significant role in establishing a collective consciousness among Black Americans that ultimately led to the realization of a Black social identity. This, in turn, yielded a Black aesthetic. (3)

If life mirrors art and art mirrors life, a Black aesthetic began to develop well before the turn of the century. Evidence can be seen in one of the earliest extant African American dramas. Intercultural protest is a vivid theme in William Wells Brown’s 1858 The Escape or Leap for Freedom,

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which is an account of his own life as a slave. But a strong element of intra-cultural protest underscores the story. Brown was a dedicated abolitionist who also wrote the first African American novel. He later became a lecturer and historian. He was born into slavery on the plantation of John Young, a physician in Kentucky. Escape is a social satire about the American institution of slavery. The plot is based on the concept of human beings as property, as passed down by the United States Supreme Court. In 1857 the federal government declared that escaped slaves remained the property of their owners, to be returned forthwith. The drama was never staged as a production but was published and presented as a reading by Brown in Salem, Ohio. Leo Hamalian and James V. Hatch have commented on Brown’s courage in presenting a subject that was taboo and illegal at that point in history (39). The script was lost and rediscovered in 1968 by Doris Abramson (Seller 39). This stroke of fortune has provided scholars with a unique opportunity to examine the social protest of early African American dramatic writing. The character of Cato, who Hamalian and Hatch refer to as a reformed Uncle Tom, reclaims his identity as he joins other escaping slaves in the final scene. James V. Hatch asserts, “By this leap for freedom, Cato becomes a human being” (Hatch and Shine 34). Cato: Ah, chile, I come wid ole massa to hunt you; an’ you see I get tired huntin’ you, an’ I am now huntin’ for Canada. I leff de ole boss in de bed at de hotel; an’ you see I thought, afore I left massa, I’d jess change clothes wid him; so, you see, I is fexed up—ha, ha, ha. Ah, chillen! I is gwine wid you. (Hatch and Shine 54)

Cato’s declaration reaffirms the idea that even the demoralized slave can find sufficient fortitude to, mentally and physically, set himself free. Brown strengthens his politics by presenting a slave who converts from former cooperation with the institution of slavery to self-preservation. He garners further support for his ideals by closing the drama with verbal and physical protest from a White supporter. Mr. White: Why, Bless me! These are the slaveholding fellows. I’ll fight for freedom! (takes hold of his umbrella with both hands. The fight commences in which Glen, Cato, Dr Gaines, Scragg, White, and the officers take part. Dr. Gaines, Scragg, and the officers are knocked down). (Hatch and Shine 58)

Mr. White is not only cunningly named but also artfully positioned as an upstanding citizen from Massachusetts, in sharp contrast to plantation owner Dr. Gaines, his wife, clergyman John Pinchen, and the overseer

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who are all despicable bigots. The distinction illustrates the author’s experiences with the slave-holding Whites of the South and the abolitionist sympathizers of the North. Brown also makes the act of protest one of decisive triumph, not the plea for understanding and tolerance that BrownGuillory states was the mark of the early protest plays, “that made an appeal for justice for African Americans” (2). Glen and Melinda battle the slave hunters before jumping into the escaping boat. They literally “leap for freedom.” Mr. and Mrs. Neal, the Quakers who aided their escape ask Thomas to sing a song he has written as they pull from shore. Mr. Neal: Well, Thomas, if thee has a ditty, thee may recite it to us. Thomas: Well, I’ll give it to you. Remember that I call it, “The Underground Railroad.” (Hatch and Shine 56)

In the final lines, Brown offers Black and White Americans, alike, a triumphant protest. Glen, Melinda, and Cato jump into the boat, and as it leaves the shore and floats away, Glen and Cato wave their hats, and shout loudly for freedom. (Hatch and Shine 58)

Intracultural communication and reform were aided interculturally by White America at critical junctures. The assistance of abolitionists and religious individuals and groups like the Quakers, Mr. and Mrs. Neal, were often a vital resource for African Americans seeking emancipation. Little is known about the production of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’ 1879 drama Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad, where intracultural reform is decidedly specific. This drama deserves an in-depth analysis because it foreshadows a critical time in African American social and economic development and also a critical change in self-perception. Hopkins, like William Wells Brown, framed Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad around a slave escape. Although the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed all slaves in America, the author returned to the theme of slavery to illustrate the fact that African Americans at that time were bidding for the next level of freedom—social and economic autonomy. So much analysis is given to this drama because it marks: a) a call to action on the part of African Americans; b) a distinction between several types of African Americans who are progressive, regressive, or a combination of both in the African American’s bid for autonomy; c) the means by which African Americans can make bids for independence; and d) the need for intra-cultural communication and cooperation.

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Sam’s peculiarity lies in the fact that he is unlike the other African American characters in the drama. He becomes a man of action against a backdrop of despair and frozen immobility. The other characters initially speak of his attribute with amusement and then admiration as his passion turns to action. Sam: Yas, we’s all gwine to Canidy! Dars been suthin’ a growin’ an’ a growin’ inter me, an’ it keep sayin’, “Run ‘way, run away, Sam. Be a man, be a free man.” An’ Mammy, ef it hadn’t been fer you an’ de gals I’d been gone long ‘go. But Ise prepared myself, in kase ob a ‘mergensy. Juno: I know whar dat is, dar aint no slabe niggers dar, dey’s all token care on by Mrs. Queen Victoria, she’s de Presidunt ob Canidy. Mammy: You hish up gal, an’ laf your brudder talk. Day allers tol’ me dat boy was pecooliar, but I neber ‘spected it would revelop itself in dis way. (Hamalian and Hatch 105)

By the end of Act I, Sam has overpowered Jim, the African American overseer, who is his reason for planning an escape to Canada, and who is his main obstacle in realizing the plan. He has also assembled his mother, sister, and true love, Virginia, in preparation for the escape. When he reenters the scene he is holding the overseer’s whip and his credibility goes up several notches in the eyes of his family. Mammy: Why, honey, I hardly know’d my own chile. Juno: What a peccoliar fellar you is! Look jes like a gemman. (Hamalian and Hatch 108)

In fact, a gentleman is what he becomes by the final act and his family realizes that his peculiarity lies, to a great extent, in his strong leadership capabilities, which make him decidedly different from the other African American males in the story. In Act IV, the entire party of escapees are settled comfortably in Canada owing to Sam’s unflinching guidance and conviction that they all deserved freedom and abundance. The idea of his peculiarity is now spoken of in awe. Caesar: Ol’ ‘ooman it are a long time sense we an’ de chillern lef’ de ol’ home, seems to me de Lor’ has blessed us all. Hyars you an’ me married, Jinny a singist, Juno a school marm; an’ las’ but not leas’, dat boy, dat pecoolar Sam, eddicated an’ gwine to de United States Congress. I tell you ol’ ‘ooman de ways ob de Lor’ am pas’ findin’ out. Mammy: Yas ol’ man, an’ hyar we is dis blessed Christmas evenin’, a settin’ hyar like kings an’ queens, waitin’, fer dat blessed boy o’ ours to come home to us. Tell you ol’ man, it’s ‘mazin’ how dat boy has ‘scaped

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Chapter Four de gins an’ sneers ob de worl’, an’ to-day am runnin’ fer Congress dar in Cincinattie, it am ‘mazin. D’ye s’pose he’ll git it ol’ man? Caesar: I don’t spec’ nothin’ else, kase dat boy allers gits what he goes fer. (Hamalian and Hatch 119)

The title character is also so named because he has adopted a “by any means necessary” approach to attaining his goals. Sam’s industriousness and determination lead him to rallying the only manpower he has—his family: Sam: Dars a mulatto fellar gwine to start a gang up river ton-night, an’ Ise gwine to be dat fellar, an’ you’s gwine to be de gang. Ef we kin ‘complish dis we’s all right, an’ we’ll say good-bye to the ole plantation. (Hamalian and Hatch 105)

The real test of his inventiveness lies in his getting around the central obstacle of Jim who is both his romantic rival for the hand of Virginia, and his barrier to freedom. Jim stands to be awarded one hundred dollars for the capture of Sam’s “gang” of runaways. Jim is also driven by the fact that Sam will be taking Virginia on his escape and that he will be punished severely by the master if he doesn’t detain the runaways. But Jim is no match for Sam’s cunning aggression. Sam first bests Jim physically, taking the whip that Jim was intending to use on him. When Sam and his party meet their Underground Railroad contact, Caesar, he disguises himself as the old man so that Caesar can transport the ladies to a safer place. Sam: All right uncle, an’ ef eny body cames, I reckon I can gib dem all de degamation dey wants. Now you jez han’ ober dat dressum gown an’ dat cap an’ I’ll reguise mysel’ inter them. (places wig and moustache in his pocket, exchanges his coat and hat for Caesars). (Hamalian and Hatch 110)

The disguise allows him to fool Jim who arrives at the hut seeking information about the runaway slaves but it is Sam’s comical bargaining with Jim that attests to his inventiveness. By the time they finish bartering, he has earned three dollars and Jim has been sent on a wild goose chase. But Jim has suspicions of his own about the false information received and returns in a ghost disguise to try to frighten the information out of Sam, who is still believed to be Caesar. Sam realizes the hoax and reverts back to physical aggression by overpowering and robbing Jim of the one hundred dollar reward money and a pistol before taking him hostage.

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Hopkins portrays Sam’s theft as a very practical necessity which loses its vice in light of the nefarious characters he is up against. The idea that one may have to “play unfair” for a higher cause is clearly being communicated by the author and she allows Sam his defense. Mammy: (more surprised) Been stealin’ too. (groans) I neber ‘spected dat ob you Sam. Sam: No use Mammy, we mus’ hab money, de Litioners am good frien’s to us, but money’s ebery man’s frien’, an’ll neber ‘tray eben a forsook coon. (Hamalian and Hatch 118)

The need for intra-cultural reform is perhaps the drama’s strongest bid. Hopkins juxtaposes four distinct “negro” types within one segment of society and allows the story to demonstrate how the four types work together effectively at furthering the goals of a disadvantaged race. The tragic mulatto is a familiar character in early American drama. Dion Boucicault brought this character center stage in his 1859 tragedy, The Octoroon. Zoe, the Octoroon, has one-eighth of African blood which keeps her from exercising the rights and advantages of the White world although she is much beloved by that society. The real tragedy is that she is considered too Black to be White and too White to be Black, and is essentially an impotent character. Curtis describes the dilemma by stating, “because the tragic mulatto operated mostly in a white world . . . the character did not explore Negro life as such” (56). Therefore, the character, usually a female, cannot assist in the furthering of African American ideals. The drama Peculiar Sam, however, utilizes a barely visible mulatto female with great power. Virginia is the force that propels the action through her influence on Sam. As the archetypal tragic mulatto she is not obsessed with her drop of Negro blood but she is carefully distinguished from the other characters by her racial status. Mammy: . . . Yes, deys bring dat gal up like a lady, she neber done nuthin’ but jes wait on Marse fambly . . . Sam: (sorrowfully) Po’ little gal (sings): Ah! Jinny is a simple chile, Wif pretty shinin’ curls, An’ white folks love her best, of all The young mulatto girls. (Hamalian and Hatch 102-103)

Ironically, Sam and his sister, Juno, are mulattos, as well. Mulatto simply means that an African American is not of pure African blood. This accounted for a large portion of the African American population in the South at that time. But Virginia clearly has much more White blood and is given White characteristics that set her apart from the others. Her dialogue

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is written in standard American English without the African American vernacular that is spoken by the other characters. Virginia: While we are waiting for Sam let’s sing again before we leave our old home. For though we leave it in darkness and sorrow, it is still our home. (Hamalian and Hatch 108)

Virginia serves to drive Sam toward his goals and in the end, she becomes his prize. Initially, Mammy brings the news of Virginia’s forced marriage to Sam. Juno then brings the news that Virginia is planning to run away. Juno: Mammy, I jes toted Jinny down hyar, for you to use some salvation wif her; talk ‘bout dat gal’s bein’ sof’ and easy. She says she’s gwine to run ‘way to-night. Virginia: Yes, Mammy, and Sam, I have come to say good-bye, it’s hard to leave the place where I was born, but it is better to do this, than to remain here, and become what they wish me to be. To fulfill this so-called marriage. (Hamalian and Hatch 104)

The announcement causes Sam to spring into action. Sam: Jinny, you isn’t ‘fraid to trust ol’ peculiar Sam, I know, kase you see Ise allers willin’ to die fer you. You needn’t bid any on us good-bye, kase dis night I ‘tends to tote you and Mammy and Juno way from hyar. Yas, an’ I’ll neber drop ye till Ise toted you safe inter Canidy. (Hamalian and Hatch 104)

After the group has settled safely in Canada, there is still some concern about the fact that Jim is still on the loose, in search of the escaped party. Virginia cannot rest until Jim’s whereabouts are known. Juno: And just to think, if Sam’s elected you’ll be poppy to a representative, and Mammy’ll be mother to one, and I’ll be sister to one. (to Virginia) And what’ll you be to him, Jinny? Virginia: Don’t talk about that Juno; there can be nothing done until Jim is found. Sam: Haven’t you one word for me, Virginia? Virginia: Find Jim, and we will be happy. (Hamalian and Hatch 121)

Mammy and Juno are two characters who can be placed in the “slave mentality” category. They are carried to freedom through proactive measures taken by Sam but possess none of his vision about the rights of

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African Americans. Mammy believes in the glories of life in the hereafter where heaven rights all wrongs. Mammy: Don’t yer gib up nor lose your spirits, for de Lord am comin’ on his mighty chariot, drawn by his big white horse, an’ de white folks hyar, am a gwine to tremble. Son Ise been waitin’ dese twenty-five year, an’ I aint guv up yet. (Hamalian and Hatch 103)

Mammy is not willing to take a stand against conditions in this world but she bears a distinct dignity and pride in her life on earth. Following Sam’s declaration that he is going to run away, to be a free man, Mammy states, “Look hyar boy, . . .I doesn’t want you to bring no disrace onter me” (Act I). And Juno’s self-racism prompts Mammy to admonish “You Juno, hish, fer we’s all His chillren, an He lubs us all.” (Hamalian and Hatch 115) Juno is much more steeped in despair and self-disgust: Juno: Dar aint no use tryin’ to be like white folds, we’s jus made fer nuthin’ but igerant slabes, an’ I jes b’lieve God don’t want nuthin’ to do wid us no how. . . Mammy dey say angels am all white. How’s I gwine to be a angel Mammy? I jes dn’ ‘lieve God wants eny brack angels, ‘deed I dn’, less ‘tis to tote things for Him. (Hamalian and Hatch 114)

Not until they are all living the White American dream, with a home, nice clothes, and Sam on his way to becoming a politician, does Juno leave behind the slave mentality and adopt a sense of self-confidence. Likewise, Mammy begins to believe in a life of hope on earth rather than heaven after all are safely established in Canada. They each, in small ways aid the escape, however. Mammy helps pave the way with Caesar, the Underground Railroad contact, and Juno uses her gun skills to provide the “muscle” that keeps Jim under guard. Jim represents the “Uncle Tom” outlook that is seen as counterproductive to the goals of African Americans in search of freedom from inequality. As Loften Mitchell states, “An “Uncle Tom”, “Tom” or “Uncle” is the most inflammatory, insulting thing a Black man can be called” (34). The term is derived directly from the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel that was adapted for the stage by George L. Aiken in that same year. The character came to be known as both a paternalistically romantic creation by Whites and as a traitor to African American dignity. In the eyes of African Americans, Uncle Toms serve Whites without question or rancor even in light of extreme oppression. As the overseer who abuses the plantation’s slaves and assists the owner in

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capturing escaped slaves, Jim is the “Tom” character. Sam draws the distinction between slaves like Jim and himself in the following passage: Jim: Ef you strike me, Marse’ll skun you. Sam: (contemptuously) Marser’s pet! Come on, you, you lizard hearted coon, we’ll hab a set-to, for Ise boun’ to take your sass out on your hide. Jim: O, ef I only had you tied to the widder! Sam: This thing is played out; as for havin’ a common nigger talkin’ ‘bout tyin’ me up, I isn’t gwine to. I wouldn’t be such a ‘teriated coon as you is for all de Norf. (Hamalian and Hatch 106)

In the final act, after Lincoln’s soldiers invaded the territory, a converted Jim has escaped and joined the group in Canada. He traveled to Massachusetts to get an education and became an attorney. In the glow of freedom all is forgiven. Sam possesses the “anti-slave” mentality; a man, who given half a chance, can parlay every opportunity into a gainful situation. All of the characters with the exception of Pete, Pomp, and Virginia undergo radical changes in outlook and position; however, Sam’s progression is the greatest and is marked by a change in speech: Well Jim, I forgive you freely for all that’s past and here’s my hand on it. And now Virginia I await your answer, when shall our wedding take place? (Hamalian and Hatch 123)

Hopkins revises his language to reflect his new status as a future statesman but also to indicate how his strivings have reaped the reward of outward equality in the White world. But Sam maintains a sense of pride in his race that can never be forgotten in his climb toward the White American dream of manifest destiny. The final lines of the play indicate that Hopkins does not want African Americans to forget their roots. Juno: But Lor’, I forgot, we can’t dance anything but high-toned dances, we must remember that ther’s the dignity of an M.C. to be upheld. But anyhow, you fellow have out the chairs and things, an’ we’ll have a quadrille. Sam: Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will excuse me for laying aside the dignity of an elected M.C. and allow me to appear before you once more as peculiar Sam of the old underground railroad. (Hamalian and Hatch 123)

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Hopkins directs the primary themes in her drama toward African Americans. The messages clearly communicate the need for all to work cohesively toward group freedom. By intertwining the lives of various character types, some at odds with one another and with the goals, the playwright makes the observation that African Americans are a heterogeneous group whose individuals come from many different life orientations. In the final analysis, Hopkins shows us that a collective conscious can be gained amongst opposing individuals so that all may reap the benefits. Her drama marks a trend toward using intra-cultural protest in drama to inspire African Americans in late nineteenth century America while serving to remonstrate against inequality. The social and political climate had become less favorable and optimistic for African Americans by the turn of the century. The newly developing African American social and economic self-assertion was countered by more conservative and fearful ideals as a result of key events occurring at the time. In 1896, through the Supreme Court’s decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case which ruled that separate facilities for African Americans did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, Jim Crow laws were introduced and “Separate but Equal” living became the law. White America was afraid of losing its social and economic advantage. Violence against African Americans increased yearly. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a political, economical, educational, and civic organization founded in 1909 that is still active and strong today. The NAACP totaled the number of lynchings, hangings, and murders of African Americans to be more than 100 (a conservative number, certainly) per year by the turn of the century. (Hatch and Shine 61) Federal, state, and local governments were mostly unable or unwilling to stem the tide of blatant crime against African American citizens. The NAACP hired investigators to collect evidence, which was turned over to the government in hopes of convicting lynchers. Violence against African Americans continued to occur unchecked as the century got underway. Thomas Dixon, a minister, wrote the 1906 novel, The Clansman, in Christian defense of the Ku Klux Klan. The novel was made into a play and then a film by D. W. Griffith called Birth of a Nation. In the story mobs of Whites become vigilantes in the capture and killing of African American men who are depicted as rapists and raving, dangerous lunatics. The propaganda was meant to place fear in the hearts of White Americans and to justify the continued slaughtering of African Americans. Against this backdrop of terror African American dramatic writing took on a tone of extreme caution and a deep-seated mistrust against White Americans. The bonds that brought slaves and freed men together with

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White abolitionists prior to emancipation became strained as African American prosperity fostered resentment amongst even liberal Whites. African Americans’ rights through Reconstruction began to be tenuous. At this time several schools of thought about what Vincent Harding calls the “post-Reconstruction African American movement toward new freedom and extended equality” were gaining influence. Booker T. Washington, head of the African American college Tuskegee Institute, began stressing a less confrontational approach to racist America and emphasized the need for the development of a viable skill or trade through advanced education. Garveyism, based on the charismatic leader, Marcus Garvey, called for a defiant return to Africa, the motherland and Zion of his followers. W. E. B. Dubois was an influential political writer whose vision for African America was a blend of Washington’s stress on education but with a push for intellectual development and Marcus Garvey’s confrontational style of freedom fighting. Aunt Betsy’s Thanksgiving by Katherine D. Chapman Tillman in 1914 reflected the cautious, non-confrontational stance in dealing with Whites espoused by Booker T. Washington. In this short one act play, Nellie, the daughter of Aunt Betsy, ran away from her violent husband one day only to return 12 years later to find her mother and her child, both of whom she had taken for dead, living in a cabin on land that she had purchased. Nellie is afraid to approach her family for fear that White hostility toward her real estate purchase would backfire on her elderly mother. The previous owner was intending to evict Aunt Betsy and twelve-year-old Caroline. Nellie’s secret purchase through a White saves Aunt Betsy from eviction. Nellie sends a letter through a lawyer stating that the property is newly purchased and will be renovated and additionally, Aunt Betsy was to be paid three dollars monthly to live on the premises. The letter is signed by a mysterious Sylvia Dean. Finally, at the close of the play Nellie reveals herself and explains her covert actions. Nellie: Mother, forgive me, it was I. I had given you up as dead long ago, in fact I had been told that you was, and of course I thought Caroline was dead. Colonel Everly had given Mr. Rodney some land for a school here at Everly. I had worked hard for years for a home of my own and I had bought this land through a white friend from the North, not knowing that you lived on it or lived anywhere on earth. When I saw Caroline that day, the truth flashed on my mind, but knowing the prejudice against colored people getting good property, by the advice of my white friend, Mrs. Sylvia Deane, I went away without seeing you until now. I cannot tell you all my story now, but I am here to be with you and Caroline always. (Hamalian and Hatch 132)

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The play is brief and burdened with an overly melodramatic plot based on a set of coincidental circumstances but its poignancy can be seen in the social and political carefulness of its characters. They are far less brash and confident than the characters of the previous generation. And yet, the fearfulness of the time did not keep African Americans from striving forward in business and education or keep dramatists from writing about it. World War I brought about the enlistment of many African American soldiers. W. E. B. DuBois and other prominent African American leaders initially encouraged African Americans to join the ranks in the fight to protect democracy until the reality of racism on American shores became too hypocritical to bear. DuBois wrote, They cheat us and mock us; they kill us and slay us; they deride our misery. When we plead for the naked protection of the law . . . they tell us to ‘GO TO HELL!’” (Qtd. in Hamalian and Hatch 135)

A new and angry reaction was stirring in African Americans. Mary Burrill’s 1919 drama Aftermath, illustrates the sentiment. Set during World War I, Aftermath, tells the story of an African American soldier returning from war. Armed with post-battle aggression and two army pistols, John is sharply contrasted with his friend Lonnie, a civilian. Lonnie is docile and fearful, while John is defiant. Millie: See what John done brought you! An’ look on de mantel! (pointing to the pistols) Lonnie: (drawing back in fear as he glances at the pistols) You’d bettah hide them things! No cullud man bettah be seen wid dem things down heah! John: That’s all right, Lonnie, nevah you fear. I’m goin’ to keep ‘em an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to hide ‘em either. See them. (pointing to the wound chevrons on his arm) Well, when I got them wounds, I let out all the rabbit-blood ‘at wuz in me! Ef I kin be trusted with a gun in France, I kin be trusted with one in South Car’lina. (Hamalian and Hatch 148)

The result of having fought and been wounded in war on foreign soil made John rebellious against the racial violence that was so prevalent in America. In the final scene of this one act drama John learns that his father has been lynched by Whites. Here, the contrast between John and the other characters is greatest. Lonnie, Mam Sue, and Millie are all desperately afraid of White violence. When Old man Withrow and the Sherley boys came to drag his father out of the house, no one tried to stop them. Furthermore, no one bothered to tell John about the lynching until the end

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of the story. They welcome him home from the war without mentioning the incident. He finds out by accident from a neighbor. This detail gives the drama and its social implications a macabre twist as we see how a group of people can become so frightened as to withhold information of that magnitude. John, as the African American race’s voice of rage, heads out in the end to seek revenge. The revenge is far more than a vendetta, however. It is a cry for freedom and a protest against post-slavery reenslavement. John: (bitterly) I’ve been helpin’ the w’ite man git his freedom. I reckon I’d bettah try now to get my own! Mam Sue: (terrified) Whut yuh gwine ter do? John: (with bitterness growning in his voice) I’m sick o’ these w’ite folks doin’s—“we’re ‘fine, trus’worthy feller citizuns” when they’re handin’ us out guns, an’ Liberty Bonds, an’ chuckin’ us off to die; but we ain’t a damn thing when it comes to handin’ us the rights we done fought an’ fled fu’! I’m sick o’ this sort o’ life—an’ I’m goin’ to put an’ end to it! Millie: (rushing to the mantel and covering the revolvers with her hands) Oh, no, no, John! Mam Sue, John’s gwine to kill hisse’f! Mam Sue: Oh, mah honey, don’ yuh go do nothin’ to bring sin on yo’ soul! Pray to de good Lawd to tek all dis fiery feelin’ out’n yo’ heart! Wait ‘tel Brudder Moseby come back—he’s gwine to pray — John: This ain’t no time fu’ preachers or prayers! You mean to tell me I mus’ let them w’ite devuls send me miles erway to suffer an’ be shot up fu’ the freedom of people I ain’t nevah seen while they’re burnin’ an’ killin’ my folks here at home! To Hell with ‘em! Millie: (throwing her arms about his neck) Oh, John, they’ll kill yuh! John: Whut ef they do! I ain’t skeered o’ none of ‘em! I’ve faced worse guns than any sneakin’ hounds kin show me! To Hell with ‘em! (he thrusts the revolver that he has just loaded into Lonnie’s hand) Take this, an’ come on here, boy, an’ we’ll see what Withrow an’ his gang have got to say! (Hamalian and Hatch 150-151)

African American outrage just after the turn of the century was being countered by the politics of assimilation. Hammalian and Hatch stated, In this milieu Booker T. Washington sought ways to prevent the complete social, political and economic reenslavement of the Negro people. His method was not militancy but accommodation. He assured White southerners that “Your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding and un-resentful people that the world has seen.” (61)

Intra-cultural protest was direct and self-indicting. Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.’s 1901 play, Caleb the Degenerate, rebuked the anti-establishment sentiments

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of African Americans who might engage in the practices of smoking, drinking, lying, stealing, or drug use and turn to Christian values as practiced by “good negroes.” These values included learning a trade, saving money, and refraining from any involvement with African American militant movements like Garveyism. Cotter wrote the following preface to his play: The Negro needs very little politics, much industrial training, and a dogged settledness as far as going to Africa is concerned. To this should be added clean, intelligent fireside leadership. Much of any other kind is dangerous for the present. I am a Negro and speak from experience. (Hammalian and Hatch 63)

Caleb, the central character, is depicted one-dimensionally as a selfdestructive brute who dies by his own self-inflicted wounds just after repenting before God and the Bishop. His sins are conveniently blamed on his heritage, allowing his social conditions and the effects of racism in White America to escape culpability. Doctor: His mother sinned ere he was born. This tainted him, therefore his wicked course. Caleb: O, God, if I have sinned because the blood Thou gavest me was tainted ere my birth, Whose is the wrong? Whose is the reckoning? Master I leave it all with Thee—with Thee. (Hatch and Shine 95)

Caleb, like Aaron in Titus Andronicus, is arrogantly individualistic and critical of the status quo. His wanton behavior is a reaction against what he considers the hypocritical and shallow morals of would-be Christians. Caleb: Patsy, Your husband has it in his pauper breast. He boasted of a hide-bound honesty. I boast me of my liberty and wit. Bishop: You are a monster! Caleb: You have spoken truth! Bishop: You know not God! Caleb: You mean God knows not me! Bishop: You are an infidel? Caleb: I am! I am! Bishop: You move without a current, sail, or creed! Caleb: My current is myself! My wit’s my sail! Bishop: Your creed? Caleb: I have a creed! It suits you not! Bishop: What is it? Caleb: Here it is! Prepare your ire!

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Caleb’s mockery of the Church and his savagery are displayed as indisputably base, particularly in contrast with the Bishop and his daughter who run the trade school for African Americans. In this superficial treatment we can see how Cotter attempted to protest the adherence to the principles of the angry African American separatist who would follow the “Back to Africa” teachings of Marcus Garvey rather than be religiously fervent and industrious in a trade of labor. Hamalian and Hatch state, Yes, Mr. Cotter is urging the African American man to follow Dr. Washington’s work ethic. As has been suggested, the race virulence of America was at a crest in Cotter’s time. Solutions for survival had to be found. Yes, the play was written with an eye to the white reader (62).

Cotter sought to reassure White America that a cooperative African American race could adhere to the values prescribed by Whites. Further, he sought to reassure White America that they were not to blame for the despairing lives of African Americans. Consequently, the drama was praised by White America. The play was sent to English poet laureate, Alfred Austin, who responded with, “It affords yet further evidence of the latent capacity of your long maltreated race for mental development” (Hatch and Shine 62). Author Israel Zangwill commented, “I desire to express my appreciation of the passages of true poetry in which you express the aspirations of the Negro race for salvation by labor” (qtd in Hatch and Shine 62). The earliest African American theatre company, the African Company of 1820-1821 presented classics as they experimented with American/European strategies. By the mid- to late nineteenth century dramas about African American life and social protest, written by African American playwrights, were written. As an African American identity became more articulated its drama found various forms of intra-cultural and intercultural communication and expression. The voices of African Americans, silent or shadowy for more than 150 years from the onset of the slave trade, emerged in dramatic protest and collaboration in the mid 19th century. Some messages were at variance with others, yet their dramatic vehicle provides vital insight into the social development of

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Africans in early America and demonstrates the social and psychological power of theatre as a medium.

Works Cited Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Curtis, Susan. The First Black Actors on the Great White Way. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Fabre, Geneviève. Drumbeats Masks and Metaphor: Contemporary AfroAmerican Theatre. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. Hamalian, Leo and Hatch, James V., eds. The Roots of African American Drama: An Anthology of Early Plays, 1858-1938. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Hatch, James V., & Ted Shine eds. Black Theatre, U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans 1847-1974. New York: The Free Press, 1974. Krasner, David. Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895-1910. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

CHAPTER FIVE ELSIE’S BIG SHOW: FROM ENTERTAINING UNDER FIRE TO FIRING STORIES IN ALL DIRECTIONS FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÉ UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY

Well, boys! la guerre est finie, And, of, course, we all are glad. But as time goes on we’ll realize That the War was not so bad. Of course it had its drawbacks, But it had its glories, too; And, for me, my greatest glory was That I got to know you. To know you in your hardships To know you in your joys; To know that my life’s finest hours Were spent among you boys. In dug-outs or in Y-huts, In boxing ring or trench, I loved to see you smile at me, And yell in Doughboy French: “Bonjour—comment te hell est vous,” And sing my songs with me. Oh, boys, I know it’s selfish, But I’m sorry it’s “fini.” For as a boy remembers The dear old swimming hole; And as a girl remembers The first kiss her sweetheart stole: Just as your mother still can feel Your golden baby locks, So are the days we spent in France

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The War is dead—long live the War! And the memory of the men Who fought and died, Or lived through hell To come back home again. So let us laugh, and let us say Thank God, we’re through. And yet— Let’s breathe a tiny little prayer Each day, Lest we forget (Janis, Poems 58-9).

This little poem shocks us in its suggestion of nostalgia for that most horrifying of modern wars—the Great War of 1914 to 1918—with its legions of hapless fodder for cannons and poison gas on both sides, stalemated in opposing trenches that were infested with rats, often ankledeep with stagnant water or mud, and stomach-wrenchingly pungent from the decay of unburied or resurfacing body parts. This upbeat poem, titled “Lest We Forget,” recalls the war experience of comedienne Else Janis, the first American celebrity to go on her own initiative to entertain the troops at the front and in military hospitals in France. Janis published the poem in a small book that she called Poems Now and Then and sent it to friends as a Christmas greeting in 1927, ten years after the events that remained so vivid in her memory. It must be acknowledged that Janis’s collection includes poems on suffering, blindness, widowhood, battlefield terror and courage, all of which she witnessed during the course of her 679 performances for over 400,000 men during her six months in war-torn France (Morrow 207). But this poem, “Lest We Forget,” written in 1919, is somehow emblematic of what the war meant to Elsie Janis in relation to her own life story and the various ways in which she told that story. Indeed, Elsie Janis expressed sentiments very similar to those of the poem when, also in 1919, she published The Big Show: My Six Months with the American Expeditionary Forces. She wrote of her personal sense of loss as soon as the Armistice made her contributions no longer relevant: I knew that the biggest thing in my life had gone out of it; never again would I sing to and cheer two or three thousand of our wonderful boys, and send them from me singing into the unknown. I was glad that their battles were over, but I was selfish enough to be sorry that my work which gave me such indescribable and infinite joy was ended. (Big Show 204)

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Her nostalgia for the war lingered into 1926, when she wrote in her collection of humorous commentaries, If I Know What I Mean: I’m not a bit thrilled about the imminent arrival of 1926. I wish it was 1916 and I could live over again the past glorious ten years. (4)

The exhilaration Elsie Janis had known when she brought moments of respite and joy to all those war-fatigued doughboys, the love that surged back to envelope her even as in mid-show they might have to take cover from an approaching bombardment or suddenly be called back to the front lines once again to face death, those experiences stayed with Janis so intensely that it became her obsession to recount them on the page, on stage, in song, in poems, and in motion pictures for the rest of her life. In retelling stories from those heady days in France, Elsie Janis was really telling—and yearning to relive—her own self-defining story. Of course, the phenomenon is well known among those who have served in the military, especially among those who have seen combat. The commitment to a cause larger than oneself alongside shared comradeship in life-threatening circumstances gives one’s life a sense of meaning and purpose that can never again be equaled. That is why, it has been noted, anyone who has served in wartime almost always chooses the photograph taken in uniform to be used with his or her obituary. Similarly, long after the end of the Great War, Elsie Janis donned repeatedly the simple garb— a woolen skirt and jacket and brimmed hat or tam—she had worn to entertain the troops, when she recreated those entertainments for the postwar theatre and for motion pictures. The Great War not only gave meaning to her life as a stage entertainer, but it also gave her a needed opportunity to find and establish her own identity through a defining narrative. Elsie Janis (1889-1956) had always been her mother’s creation, by training as well as by birth. She was three years old when her parents divorced, and her mother, Jennie Bierbower, began coaching her little girl to sing, dance, and tell stories in front of audiences. Elsie recalled in her autobiography, So Far, So Good: I was a strange little puppet. She pulled the strings, or turned me on and off at will, like a music box. She even made up my face until I was past thirteen! (20)

Mrs. Bierbower gave her daughter the stage name “Little Elsie,” the only identity by which the child knew herself during her years as a trouper in vaudeville when she delighted audiences with her ethnic-dialect anecdotes

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and imitations of celebrities. As a teen, she yearned to move beyond the “Little Elsie” persona but did not know how to do so. It was a professional photographer named Rockwood who advised Mrs. Bierbower that the young performer needed a last name, and according to So Far, So Good, it was he who chose “Janis” (31). Indeed, “the official birth of Elsie Janis” in name proved also to be a milestone in her process of self-definition: she let her “hair grow, and bought a corset” (31). She gave up reading boyish adventure books (Jesse James, the Alger Brothers, Diamond Dick) in favor of Louisa May Alcott and others geared to readers in transition from girlhood to womanhood (32). While Elsie Janis as a young teen told jokes, sang, and danced with an ease and maturity beyond her years, her mother—the ever-vigilant and aggressive Mrs. Bierbower, later known as “Ma Janis”—negotiated the contracts. In 1905, at age sixteen, Elsie advanced to Broadway musical comedies and revues, and she filled the time between major shows with engagements at the Palace and other big-time vaudeville. Her major breakthrough came when she was seventeen, with The Vanderbilt Cup (1906). After that, the great producer Charles Dillingham created a series of vehicles for her: The Hoyden (1907), The Fair Co-ed (1909), The Slim Princess (1911), Lady of the Slipper (1912), and The Century Girl (1916). With those successes came stage-door Johnnies, but as Janis recalled in an article she wrote for American Magazine, “Mother … was the Rock of Gibraltar against which the sea of mashers hurled themselves in vain” (34). It was Ma Janis who negotiated a canny deal with British impresario Alfred Butt to win Elsie a lucrative engagement at London’s Palace Theatre, opening in March 1914. There, in The Passing Show of 1914, Elsie befriended Basil Hallam, who did a number called “Gilbert the Filbert” and became her leading man. It was rumored on both sides of the Atlantic that Elsie and Basil might become engaged to marry. But two weeks after the August 1914 outbreak of the Great War, Elsie left the show to visit hospitals and entertain the wounded who were already arriving back from France. Basil Hallam finally succeeded in enlisting despite the bad instep that had caused him to be rejected at the start of the war (Janis, So Far 136-7). Elsie and Basil parted at Euston Station on 24 July 1915; he was killed in France, in a fall from his untethered observation balloon, on 20 August 1916. With the American declaration of war on Germany on 6 April 1917, Elsie Janis went on the big-time vaudeville circuit as the fastest source of ready cash to fund the venture that began to obsess her. She realized that the American troops abroad would need entertainment to lift their spirits,

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and she had the pluck and determination to present herself independently, without waiting for organized efforts by the YMCA or, eventually, the Over There Theatre League.1 During those ten weeks of performing patriotic numbers in vaudeville around the nation, Elsie Janis also visited Army training camps and appeared at benefits and Liberty Bond rallies. Much of that work gave her a foretaste of which material would go over best with the boys at the front. Elsie Janis’s great story—or as she described it, “the only really vital ‘part’ I have ever played in life!”—began in February 1918 when she and her mother sailed for France armed with a no-longer-valid pre-war contract to perform in Paris and accompanied by two servants and a Pekingese (So Far 182). They docked in Bordeaux and made their way to the Hotel Crillon in Paris. For ten days, Elsie Janis performed in Paris revues for soldier audiences in the evenings and spent her days visiting government offices to seek permission to travel to the camps and perform for the men in the danger zones (Janis, Big Show 10). Sheer persistence ultimately got Elsie Janis a chauffeured Army car by which she and her mother proceeded to travel around France. She performed on the backs of trucks or even on the roofs of vehicles, on makeshift platforms, and in hospital wards—sometimes up to nine performances a day. She would even mount a bench to sing through the windows of some contagion barracks where, isolated, the doughboys had been tearing their infected hair with disappointment because they had heard she was in the post and knew they could not get out to see her. (Woollcott, “Elsie” 11)

Janis later recalled the conditions under which she performed: You see, it’s really splendid playing under shellfire. It ‘peps’ you up so; not knowing which song may be your last makes you do your best, spurred on by the ambition that fills every performer’s heart to make a good exit. (Big Show 135)

One of Elsie Janis’s most memorable performances in France was reported to the New York Times (17 June 1918) by Alexander Woollcott, who was then a sergeant writing for the Stars and Stripes in Paris. On that occasion, a train shed was packed to the rafters with 4,000 Yanks awaiting the announced appearance of Elsie Janis. To the amazement of all, when the locomotive came chugging into the roundhouse, there was “our Elsie” perched on the cowcatcher at the front of the engine, waving her free arm! The engine took her right up to the platform, where she leapt off. She

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called out her famous morale-lifting question: “Are we downhearted?” The response, as always, was a thunderous “no!” Janis herself wrote of that performance in The Big Show: After dinner we drove out to the engineers’ camp. The show was in what was called a round-house—really a repair shop for sick engines. When we arrived they said they had a good entrance for me if I was not afraid. I murmured, “You know me, Al. Lead me to it!” So I rode up a track in the middle of the place on a regular Baldwin locomotive, not in the cab, but on the cow-catcher, waving my free arm. The fellows fell back on either side and the engine took me right up to the platform, then “toot-tooted” and backed out. What a wonderful crowd! I sang, told stories and cut up generally for an hour. (30)

Her retelling characteristically conveys her personal exuberance without false modesty about how much she relished the adulation of the boys—as described more fully in Woollcott’s report: The boys … slap her on the back and vow there never was such a girl since the world began. They cheer her until they are hoarse, and she is dizzy with pride. (“Elsie” 11)

Woollcott further commented on what he witnessed: I think that nothing shipped over to us since Pershing landed has been of such value … as the shipment known as Elsie Janis. … Elsie Janis (and mother) are having the time of their lives. (“Elsie” 11)

Indeed, General Pershing himself enjoyed Elsie’s capers and told her, Elsie, when you first came to France someone said you were more valuable than a whole regiment—then someone raised it to a division, but I want to tell you that if you can give our men this sort of happiness you are worth an Army Corps. (Big Show 103)

What explains Elsie Janis’s extraordinary rapport with the troops to a degree far beyond that of the many other stage performers who played the camps and battlefields? According to Lee Alan Morrow, Elsie and her mother had spent their lives analyzing audiences, and Elsie could always gear her multi-faceted talent to the immediate situation. Elsie, to a remarkable extent, acquired the point of view of the common soldier” (Morrow 209). She understood that “men who had been under fire wanted to be kidded and treated like pals” (210). She used the soldiers’ own slang and refused to express sympathy. No soldier’s wounds were so horrifying

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that she could not look him in the face and remain relentlessly cheerful. Billboard (7 June 1919) reported that the soldiers regarded her as “‘one of the boys’ under any and all conditions” (“Elsie”). It is not my purpose to chronicle in detail the tireless activity that earned Elsie Janis the epithet “Sweetheart of the American Expeditionary Forces.” Suffice to say that she financed her own way, leaving the maid and the Pekingese at the Paris hotel while she and her mother braved the muddy roads, the rain, accommodations in villages without running water or electricity or heat. When her funds ran low, she sailed for London and earned a bundle of money by performing at the Palace in a show called Hullo, America! In a specialty sequence, she told her war stories and sang in the manner of soldiers of different ethnicities. When not performing for the money to support a return to France, she took time to entertain in hospitals and munitions factories. Elsie Janis’s intended return to her “boys” in France was thwarted by the Armistice, so she and her mother sailed for home. As Elsie recalled in The Big Show: There is no doubt that with the end of the war came the death of something inside of me. Pride, perhaps, for I have never felt really proud of myself since. I’ve been pleased with the work I’ve done and grateful for the success I’ve had in several different lines, but the war was my high spot and I think there is only one real peak in each life! (Big Show 234)

Within the year after Armistice, Elsie Janis had published The Big Show and was rehearsing Elsie Janis and Her Gang, a Broadway soldier revue that opened on December 1, 1919. It was not easy getting that show to Broadway. Her old producer Charles Dillingham would not touch it, as he believed that audiences were eager to put the war into the past and were weary of seeing uniforms on stage or anywhere else (Morrow 223). Incensed by that attitude and intent on honoring the men in uniform, Elsie Janis became her own producer. Recycling her war stories for popular consumption clearly gave Elsie Janis a personal thrill, but the applause of a Broadway audience could never again measure up to what it had meant to lift the spirits and feel the love of thousands of soldiers at the front. Only those who had known the comradeship that is forged in hell could truly understand. And that is why she put together a company of performers who had seen action, many of them decorated (“Fighters” 9). With a cast of talented but amateur exsoldiers (plus Eva LeGallienne to play the French female roles), Elsie Janis then made herself into a stage director. She drilled her company with military discipline, coached them individually, and took them on the road

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for three weeks to hone their skills before they hit Broadway (Morrow 226). Putting herself into the roles of producer and stage director tied in with Elsie Janis’s process of self-definition as one whose essential identity was forged in war. In these capacities she could use the leadership skills she had observed during her extensive interactions with generals and other staff officers. She had not only dined and socialized with what she termed T.A.G.s—Terribly Attractive Generals—but she had negotiated hazardous routes and near-battlefield performance venues with them. Moreover, Elsie Janis’s gallantry had earned her the courtesy rank of captain (“Elsie”), and she was “the only honorary captain of the A.E.F.” (“Captain” 8). Yet, even as she exercised martinet authority over her show, Elsie Janis as a performer flaunted the hoydenish persona that had been shaped by interaction with the Yanks in France. That identity is evoked in the title of a six-reeler she made for Selznick Pictures in summer 1919, a silent film originally titled Everybody’s Sweetheart. Selznick’s writers had undoubtedly intended to capitalize on the leading lady’s reputation as “Sweetheart of the American Expeditionary Forces,” but Janis insisted on changing the title to The Regular Girl (Morrow 222). A “regular girl”— the female pal of the guys—was how she chose to define herself, and that is how she was perceived by her devoted soldier audiences. In his review of Elsie Janis and Her Gang in a Bomb-Proof Revue in 2 Acts, Alexander Woollcott recognized that Elsie Janis had a coterie audience. The show was clearly aimed at service men and more particularly those service men who were lucky enough to get overseas. The jokes and songs and stunts are mostly meant for them. (11)

He declared Elsie herself “matchless” and concluded that if slum and reveille and corned willie and top sergeants and wrap leggins and cooties ever meant anything in your life, you will have a wonderful time with ‘Elsie Janis and Her Gang’ (“Our Elsie” 11)

Elsie Janis never stinted on the energy she put into a performance. In addition to her soldier show six evenings and two matinees a week on Broadway, she made benefit appearances for war-related charities and for organizations like the American Legion. By January 1920 she was close to breaking down from overwork, and her physician recommended closing the show. After a rest she took Elsie Janis and Her Gang on a national tour and was gratifyingly acclaimed by soldier audiences everywhere.

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Then Elsie and her mother relaxed a bit by traveling for pleasure in France and England, but the indefatigable Elsie wrote herself a new revue and got Alfred Butt to give it a London production. She performed in It’s All Wrong for 112 performances and closed it only in order to move on to Paris (Morrow 238). There she opened a revue at the Apollo in May 1921; her “knockout” performance included imitations—in French—of Mistinguett, Max Dearly, and Sarah Bernhardt (James 10). And then it was back to New York for a new version of Elsie Janis and Her Gang, this one subtitled In a New Attack, which opened 16 January 1922. Alexander Woollcott’s review speculated about the low-budget scenery and costumes: Or was it simply that Elsie Janis, who has never been thoroughly demobilized, discovered during the war that she could give the perfection of entertainment on the tailboard of a camion and will never be able to see why anything more scenically should be required! (“Uncanny” 13)

After 56 performances on Broadway, the show toured, with Elsie and her mother enjoying accommodations in her new private railway car. During that tour and her next few years of concert tours and vaudeville, Elsie Janis would always find time to perform for veterans’ causes. In 1926, Elsie Janis got the chance to replay her wartime act for talking pictures. Vitaphone Varieties released the short film titled Behind the Lines, in which Elsie Janis sang and capered on the back of a truck, accompanied by a pianist on the truck and uniformed soldiers arranged around two sides of the truck platform. That footage still exists, although the first minute or so of the visual has deteriorated (Al Jolson, Disc 3). The sound begins with Elsie’s signature question “Are we downhearted?” and the resounding reply: “No!” After a song in French she banters with the pianist, then attempts to sing the classic French song of the Great War, “Madelon.” She quickly falters and calls a soldier onto the truck to sing it; the others join on the chorus. Then Elsie sings an American favorite, “In the Army,” after which the soldiers repeat the song while she hoofs it, executing some much-appreciated high kicks. The final selection is a British song, “Goodby-ee,” sung by another soldier whom she calls up onto the truck platform. Elsie Janis herself was disappointed with the movie short and felt that her personality did not translate well to the screen (Morrow 270), but viewers of the surviving footage today can sense her exuberance and the genuine pleasure she took in her interactions with the soldiers. Seeing the Vitaphone footage after reading the stories she tells in The Big Show somehow fulfills Elsie Janis’s need to preserve for posterity

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a sense of the emotional high she got from her capers for those adoring doughboys. The American cultural landscape changed drastically after the financial crash of 1929, along with the decline of vaudeville and the entrenchment of talking pictures. Elsie Janis gradually withdrew from performing while she devoted herself to writing a briefly-syndicated newspaper column, fiction, screenplays, and her autobiography So Far, So Good. In 1930, Elsie Janis had to cope with the death of her mother, the one who had originally constructed her identity as “Little Elsie.” Living alone for the first time in her life, Elsie Janis had to redefine herself as one who could manage her own finances even though the entertainment forms that once generated great wealth had now dried up. During those years out of the spotlight, her devotion to the American soldier continued through volunteer work for veterans’ organizations (Morrow 299). During World War II she supported the war effort on radio and made daily visits to veteran homes and hospitals (Morrow 309). When I began this research, I expected to show how Elsie Janis’s postwar retellings of her war experiences were impacted by the demands of commercial entertainment. It might well seem to the casual observer that she exploited her wartime reputation as a career move. Certainly that kind of accommodation can be found elsewhere. Arthur Guy Empey’s career trajectory might serve as a brief comparative example. Sergeant Empey (1884—1963) was an American who reacted to the news of the torpedoed Lusitania on 7 May 1915 by enlisting with the British Army. He served 18 months as a machine gunner in France until he was seriously wounded in a trench raid, very nearly died, and spent four months in recovery and rehabilitation before being discharged as “physically unfit for further war service” (Empey 279). Thus he returned to the United States just when Americans were gearing up to join the Allies. Empey’s war memoir Over the Top (1917) quickly became a national best-seller, and indeed the book is still a gripping good read. It might be noted that Elsie Janis was a fan of the book, for she took one of Empey’s anecdotes and turned it into a narrative poem titled “The Slacker,” which she included in The Big Show (150-3) along with a note: “Dedicated to Guy Empey’s book ‘Over the Top’” (150). “The Slacker” later appeared also in her Poems Then and Now (54-7). Arthur Guy Empey proved to be as captivating on the lecture stage as he was on the page. The New York Times report of his presentation to a capacity audience at Carnegie Hall on 14 October 1917 called him “a good actor and a mimic.” On a bare stage, he spoke for two hours about his experiences and about what the Americans might expect over there, and he

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promoted Liberty Bonds (“Soldier’s” 7). For the next year or so, he was much in demand as a lecturer nationwide. Meanwhile, he formed his own motion picture company, wrote a screenplay based on his book Over the Top, played the leading role in it, and also directed. That Vitagraph film — promoted as the “Greatest Production in the History of Motion Pictures” — was released in 1918 (“Over”). Empey made other silent films, wrote more books, wrote numerous short stories for Collier’s and various pulp fiction magazines, and even wrote the lyrics to a war ballad, “Your Lips Are No Man’s Land But Mine” (1917), all drawing upon his celebrity as “Up-and-At-’Em Empey,” the lionized author of Over the Top. By September 1917 Empey was lending his name to endorse a book titled Salt of the Earth by Mrs. Alfred Sidgewick, published by W. J. Wall (“Says” BR 369). Even more blatantly commercial was a display ad for Theroz Mess Kit that reproduced his testimonial letter in which he claimed that such equipment “would have been a God-send to me” (Theroz, 16 June, 12). Another Theroz Mess Kit advertisement touted Empey as the authority on “what to send your boy” (Theroz, 30 June, 12). In July 1918, three days after he was awarded a captain’s commission in the U.S. Army Adjutant General’s Department, Empey was honorably discharged under mysterious circumstances (“Empey” 9, “Silence” 2). With the 1920s came widespread American disenchantment regarding the heroic view of war culture. Empey’s know-it-all swagger took a toll on his public image. While Over the Top long remained in print, Arthur Guy Empey himself— after a stint as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1920s and early 30s— faded into obscurity. He died in 1963 in Wadsworth, Kansas. Elsie Janis died in 1956, having consciously chosen to fade from public view after her mother’s death. Yet she quietly continued to support the cause that had defined her in the way she preferred to be remembered. Without detracting from the true heroism of his military service, it may be said that Arthur Guy Empey resorted to trading upon his name recognition for financial advantages. Elsie Janis, on the other hand, seems to have felt that the war had given her a sense of identity and a peak period of fulfillment in her life, and it was not something to be exploited commercially. As she noted in The Big Show, when she had to leave France with the intention of earning enough in London to finance continuing her performances at the front, she “had no interest in life” when it meant “playing for money instead of love” (193). All of the evidence suggests that Elsie Janis was utterly sincere in her recycling of her war stories in books, musical revues, and motion pictures. Yes, those retellings undoubtedly served as a kind of dopamine for her with their fleeting reminders of the time when she had lived to the fullest

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in every fiber of her being. But in the larger picture, she was always “a regular girl” giving back to the men who had enabled her to define herself while they contributed in a major way to defining their nation for the first time as a player on the world stage.

Works Cited Al Jolson: The Jazz Singer. Three-Disc Deluxe Edition. DVD. Disc 3: Astonishing Rarities. Vitaphone, Elsie Janis in a vaudeville “Behind the Lines” assisted by the Men’s Chorus of the 107th Regiment 339. Atlanta: Turner Entertainment Company, 2007. “Captain Elsie Janis to Sing,” New York Times (14 September 1919), 8. “Elsie Janis Returns,” Billboard (7 June 1919). Empey, Arthur Guy. Over the Top. New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1917. “Empey Discharged From Army by Wilson,” New York Times (26 July 1918). “Fighters Aid Elsie Janis,” New York Times (27 October 1919), 9. James, Edwin L. “Elsie Janis Wins Her Paris Audience,” New York Times (14 May 1921), 10. Janis, Elsie. The Big Show: My Six Months with the American Expeditionary Forces. New York: Cosmopolitan Books, 1919. —. If I Know What I Mean. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925. —. Poems Now and Then. Colorado Springs, Colorado: Gowdy Printing and Engraving Co., n.d. —. So Far, So Good! An Autobiography. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1932. —. “The Story of My Life,” American Magazine (November 1917), 33-5. Morrow, Lee Alan. “Elsie Janis: A Compensatory Biography,” Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1988. “Over the Top,” advertisement for the motion picture. Bourbon News, Paris, Kentucky (16 August 1918). “Says Arthur Guy Empey,” advertisement. New York Times (30 September 1917), BR 369. “Silence Shrouds Empey Discharge from U.S. Army,” The Washington Times (Washington D.C., 26 July 1918), 2. “Soldier’s Plea Stirs Big Bond Meeting,” New York Times (15 October 1917), 7. Theroz Mess Kit, advertisements. New York Tribune (16 June 1918), 12; (30 June 1918), 12.

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Woollcott, Alexander. “Elsie Janis Capers on Western Front,” New York Times (17 June 1918), 11. —. “Our Elsie,” New York Times (2 December 1919), 11. —. “The Uncanny Janis,” The New York Times (17 January 1922), 13.

CHAPTER SIX SEX MACHINES: FUTURISM AND MODERNITY IN AMERICAN EXPRESSIONIST THEATRE YIYI LÓPEZ GÁNDARA QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti described the foundational moment of Futurism as the ultimate confrontation of the individual and the machine: Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls. (Raine 49)

Modernity, with its accelerated rhythms, mechanized motions and its urban symphonies, was for the Futurists the expression of an eternal beauty: the beauty of the machine. These at once hellish and alluring visions in which Futurists indulged are not unlike those that appear in American so-called Expressionist theatre, in which an irreducible tension between the individual and the machine is perceived in its depiction of a highly mechanized society. The machine is central to a not insignificant number of 1920s American plays, which include in their titles or their plots references to technology, electricity, mechanisms, contraptions and artifacts. Such is the case of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922) and Dynamo (1929), Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923) and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928). Either as direct successors of continental Expressionism, or as initiators of an endemic Modernist drama, these plays are generally considered portraits of the “technologically induced alienation” of modern society (Walker 9). For example, in his seminal study Accelerated Grimace:

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Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s (1972), Mardi Valgemae has observed in these playwrights’ use of European Expressionist techniques a Marxist critique of the processes of modernization which oppress and alienate the individual, who is deprived of spiritual anchorage in a technological society (1-14). Also, in her enlightening study Expressionism and Modernism and American Theatre (2005), Julia Walker understates (but does not altogether reject) the German influence on American Expressionism: she sees these plays as personal responses to the processes of modernization and the development of technologies in theatre, as well as a reflection of the anxieties of American playwrights confronted by an age of mechanization that endangers their status as artists (1-12). In both cases, the view that is offered of technology is not a particularly reassuring or comforting one: rather, the machine is rendered a source of conflict and fear for the individual, who is assailed by modernity. Although I do not intend to overrule these readings, in this essay I call into question the undisputed claim that the machine is necessarily a site of fear and anxiety in these plays. Without denying that the machine is a locus of conflict, and without denying the persistence of an Expressionist aesthetic and ethic in these works, I draw attention to those Futurist elements, so far overlooked or misunderstood, which place the machine at the centre of desire of the 1920s American stage. 1 It is this erotic relationship between American theatre and the machine that I seek to explore by addressing a double question: do these plays engage in Marxist-Expressionist depictions of the machine as an alienating mechanism of capitalism, that is, as castrator? Or do they indulge in Futurist representations of the machine as object of desire, that is, as fetish? Although the first view has often drawn on the generalization of Marxist readings of Expressionist masterpieces such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), here I suggest that it may also derive from specific productions that have privileged this aspect, and have therefore provided slanted interpretations of these plays. The final conclusion of my analysis is that a more complex treatment of the machine (which is also more faithful to the text) would favor alternative, or at least richer, interpretations of these plays. A futuristic fascination with technology and the electrifying speed of the latest technological advancements in transport and communication pervaded the early decades of the twentieth century. In art, the machine was regarded and depicted as both a redeeming and a condemning force for Western civilization, a symbol of human progress and of human apocalypse. The machine, beautiful and threatening at once, fascinated and

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terrified modern artists. This fascination lay mostly in its implications of speed and dynamism, its defiance of the laws that traditionally dominated spatio-temporal relations and its power to aid, but also to alienate, human labor. Artists and intellectuals responded to the vertiginous rhythms of modernity, as well as the implications of the first fully mechanized war, by propounding artistic dogmas which contended as the ultimate expression of the modern, from Pablo Picasso’s Cubism and Wassily Kandinsky’s Abstractionism to Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism, Vladimir Tatlin’s Constructivism and André Breton’s Surrealism. In between, there was a variety of movements which included, of course, Italian Futurism, founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909, and German Expressionism. Although the origins of German Expressionism hark back to the founding of the artists’ group Die Brücke in 1905, it reached a climactic point in the 1920s with the plays of Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller, the films of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Fritz Lang, and with the internationalization of the movement. As the different avant-garde movements rapidly succeeded each other, they incorporated elements of the preceding dying isms. Although there is a tendency to downplay the influence of Futurism on other avant-garde movements, mainly due to its progressive politicization and eventual embracing of Fascist ideology, the machine as an autonomous poetic entity is primarily a product of the Futurist aesthetic. This is precisely Lisa Panzera’s argument in her essay “Italian Futurism and Avant-Garde Painting in the United States” (2000), where she contends that the tendency in American art criticism to disregard the influence of Futurism in the post-1916 period is the result of “the American proclivity to dehistoricize and depoliticize the movement” (222). 2 Only incipient in Cubism in the form of a tendency towards fragmentation, the mechanistic element was eroticized in Futurism and Dada, used to express dynamism, simultaneity and disintegration in Vorticism and Expressionism, and finally fused with unconscious desire in Surrealism. In all of these, the machine was fetishized, deployed to portray a highly stylized and sensualized image of modernity. What this shows is that love (if not passion) for the machine was in the air in the early decades of the twentieth century.3 Futurism was introduced to the New York art scene in 1913 with the epoch-making Armory Show, organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. In it, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), which captures through fragmentation the quasimechanical movement of the human body, was exhibited.4 The American journals of the time soon started to publish Futurist manifestoes, theoretical texts by Futurist artists and photographs of their works. Italian

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Futurists were finally exhibited at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, which was followed in 1917 by an exhibition of the works of Gino Severini at Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291. Stieglitz’s role in the promotion of Futurism in America was invaluable. Together with him, other figures who were central to the propagation of Futurist ideas were Mina Loy (who also joined the Provincetown Players in 1916) and Ezra Pound, whose support of Imagism and Vorticism contributed to the consolidation of a futuristic aesthetic concerned with compression and simultaneity: Pound’s definition of image as the expression of an “intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” (Pound 4) and of Vortex as the “point of maximum energy” which he identified with “electricity or radioactivity, a force transfusing, welding and unifying” (qtd. in Perloff 173) found correspondences, not only in American Futurism, but in Expressionism as well.5 The emergence of Expressionist theatre in America in the early 1920s was marked by this conflation of artistic theories, which tended to emphasize their commonalities, rather than accentuate their differences. The words of the German Expressionist poet Gottfried Benn demonstrate this: “Futurism, as a style, also called Cubism, goes primarily under the name of Expressionism in Germany” (qtd. in White 39). The influence of Futurism on Expressionist theatre was manifest even from its German origins. German Expressionist theatre, especially the productions of August Stramm’s and Oscar Kokoschka’s plays for Die Sturmbühne, incorporated typically Futurist elements: cylindrical costumes, geometrical scenery, masks, electro-mechanical devices, distortion, abstraction, symbolism, synthesis, simultaneity, and mechanized dialogues, movements and gestures. By the time Expressionism emerged in America, these elements were used indistinctly in varied forms of avant-garde theatre, from Zurich Dada soirées and Futurist mechanical ballets to German Expressionist dramas. The principle underlying all of them was a rejection of mimetic representation, which was deemed inadequate for the exploration of the human condition in what Walter Benjamin would later call the “age of mechanical reproduction” (217). It cannot be denied that Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922) is a play that draws attention to the exploitation of the working classes in modern society: it is the story of Yank, a proud stoker on an ocean liner who is forced to realize (although it is uncertain whether he ever does) that he does not belong anywhere in the social order. In a way, the play is reminiscent of George Grosz’s caustic, politically charged drawings of the 1920s, because they both present, with a combination of pathos and piercing sincerity, a society split by economic forces which separate

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individuals into two distinct groups: the owners of capital and the dispossessed. In The Hairy Ape, O’Neill makes use of Expressionist techniques to emphasize the alienated condition of the workers in a ship’s stokehole: their stooping posture, their overdeveloped muscles, their animalized traits, their metallic voices, the enclosed space which they inhabit, the oppressive sound of the whistle and so on are all elements which underscore their alienation. The play constantly reproduces a miseen-abîme effect as the workers become machines that are controlled by machines that are controlled by the owners of capital, something which is even articulated by Yank towards the end of the play: “Steel was me, and I owned de woild. Now I ain’t steel, and de woild owns me”. Yank is part of this grotesquely distorted scenery: he is caricatured, as much as the bourgeois characters in the play are, and much more so than his fellow workers. But this caricature relies for its effectiveness on a very specific type of characterization that draws on the typically Nietzschean superman of Marinetti’s manifestoes: Yank is presented as a young, strong and energetic individualist, as opposed to old sentimental Paddy and unionized Long. Thus, this seemingly powerful individual who belongs, derides their sentimentalized views of home: “Home! T’hell wit home! Dis is home, see?” (211). Also, he mocks their romanticized ideas of love: “[Girls] Dey’re all tarts, get me? Treat ‘em rought, dat’s me. To hell wit ‘em” (211). And finally, their nostalgic images of the past too: all dat crazy tripe about suns and winds, fresh air and de rest of it —Aw hell, dat’s all a dope dream! Hittin’ de pipe of the past, dat’s what he’s doin.’ (215)

Furthermore, with proud masculinity, he disallows their vision of the hellish stokehole: “Hell in de stokehole? Sure! It takes a man to work in hell. Hell, sure, dat’s my fav’rite climate” (215). These words bear echoes of the Futurists’ fascination with labyrinthine industrial sites and engine rooms. For example, the Vorticist Wyndham Lewis, obsessed with industrialism, recalled a visit to an industrial city in the North of England with the painter Edward Wadsworth, another notable Vorticist: [Wadsworth] stopped the car and we gazed down its blackened labyrinth. I could see he was proud of it. ‘It’s like Hell, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. (qtd. in Meyers 112)

Also like the Futurists, Yank is fascinated by speed as he keeps repeating “Twenty-five knots a hour!”, and his identification with the machine, heavy and dynamic at once, is reminiscent of the Futurist ideal of

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perfection in, for instance, Umberto Boccioni’s sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), where the robust body, made of bronze and energized by speed, becomes an aerodynamic machine. This ideal was certainly embodied by Louis Wolheim in the original 1922 Provincetown production: YANK: I’m de ting in coal dat makes it boin; I’m steam and oil for de engines; I’m de ting in noise dat makes youh hear it; I’m smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles; I’m de ting in gold dat makes it money! And I’m what makes iron into steel! Steel, dat stands for de whole ting! And I’m steel-steel-steel! I’m de muscles in steel, de punch behind it! (216)

In this way, Yank is portrayed (or rather, portrays himself, which is part of the ironic caricature that O’Neill draws) as being the very essence of the ship, the substance that makes movement possible. The play reaches a Futurist climax as Yank objectifies desire through the image of the machine-lover-fetish. The potential threat posed by the castrating female (“She’s gittin’ hungry!”) is counteracted by Yank’s highly sexualized discourse that turns the machine into an owned fetish: Open her up! … One-two-tree- ... Dat’s de stuff! Let her have it! All togedder now! Sling it into her! Let her ride! Shoot de piece now! Call de toin on her! Drive her into it! Feel her move! Watch her smoke! Speed, dat’s her middle name! Give her coal, youse guys! Coal, dat’s her booze! Drink it up, baby! Let’s see yuh sprint! Dig in and gain a lap! Dere she goo-es. (224)

Yank’s misogynist idiom, further accentuated when he and Long refer to white bourgeois Mildred, also recalls the kind of rhetoric and attitudes found in Futurist texts. In more sophisticated terms than his, but which present a similar eroticized image of the machine, Marinetti affirmed: The world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath -a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. (Raine 51)

In O’Neill’s Dynamo (1929), these processes of eroticization acquire a more complex dimension as the machine is not only fetishized, but also turned into a maternal figure and, eventually, an omnipotent female idol. The orchestrator of these transfigurations is Reuben Light, the son in a Puritan household where, ironically, there is no electric light. Throughout

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the play, references to the machine, electricity and technology provide moments of intense eroticism: the sound of the gramophone playing jazz (both symbols of modernity) anticipates the encounter between Reuben and Ada, the daughter of the Lights’ atheist neighbors, in the first scene. Also, when Ada’s mother daydreams, her fantasies combine sentimentality and sensualised visions of the machine: Ada loves that Light boy... he must be nice... he isn’t to blame because his father believes in religion... maybe his father is nice too if you got to know him off the job... Ramsay is always so cranky when he’s at the plant... I love the plant... I love the dynamos... I could sit forever and listen to them sing... they’re always singing about everything in the world... (She hums to herself for a moment —an imitation of the whirring purr of a dynamo). (436)

Although the conflict between science and religion is central to the play, I would like to focus on an aspect which is generally neglected, and it is the fact that Reuben is a character ridden with Oedipal anxiety: he is dominated by a hateful religious father, a jealous and overprotective mother and a castrating girlfriend. When Reuben leaves the house because he cannot take his repressive existence anymore, his vindictive statement that there is “No God but Electricity!” (453) does not only kill God, in a typically Nietzschean manner, but it also kills the father. The symbolic death of the father, which defines Reuben as a prototypical Oedipal figure, becomes a necessary step towards the final erotic reunion with the machine-mother. On his return, he is a different man, almost unrecognizable, for he has avenged his austere upbringing by replacing God with science and technology: “The only god I believe in now is electricity”, he states. Towards the end of the play, eroticized visions of the archetypal mother coalesce with the image of the mechanical lifebearing dynamo, which Reuben, fascinated to the point of delirium, describes as a great dark idol… like the old stone statues of gods people prayed to… only it’s living and they were dead… that part on top is like a head… with eyes that see you without seeing you… and below it is like a body… not a man’s… round like a woman’s… as if it had breasts… but not like a girl… not like Ada… no, like a woman… like her mother… or mine… a great, dark mother! (474)

In the end, torn apart by sexual desire for Ada, mystic delusion and guilt, he finally reunites with the Dynamo-Mother in an erotic embrace, a mixture “of pain and loving consummation” (488), which kills him. For

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this scene, O’Neill himself provided a fairly aseptic sketch in which the technical or mechanical part of the set was uppermost. However, it is interesting to note that Eugene C. Fitsch’s more Expressionist, darker and ominous scenery seems to have exerted a powerful influence on the collective appreciations of the play. As in Dynamo, the machine is also associated with moments of intense eroticism in Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923). Although ostensibly a play about the dispensability of the modern individual in a mechanized world (the straightforward story is that of a guy, Mr. Zero, who kills his boss after being told that he is going to be replaced by an adding machine), Rice’s use of avant-garde techniques and his deliberate rejection of realistic representation present technology as the focus of the protagonist’s erotic fantasies. Throughout the play, the only moments at which the characters exhibit a certain degree of emotion, humanity, sentimentality or, indeed, pleasure, are always moments in which technology takes precedence. For example, the idea of love that Mrs. Zero and Daisy hold is one mediated by film. On the screen, fictionalized, mechanically produced bodies offer a romanticized and artificial vision of love: in the case of Mrs. Zero, these present a “sweet and wholesome” picture of love (4) which contrasts with the passionless and compassionless reality of her marriage. In the case of Daisy, Zero’s work colleague and lover in the afterlife, she daydreams about “Them kisses in the movies —them long ones- right on the mouth” (11), a counterpoint to the kiss that she desires but never gets (at least in her lifetime) from Zero. Also, while at work, Zero and Daisy intersperse their automated reading out and adding of figures with disconnected fantasies of a more fulfilling existence: ZERO: I wonder if I could kill the wife without anybody findin’ out. In bed some night. With a pillow. DAISY: I used to think you was stuck on me. ZERO: I’d get found out thought. They always have ways. DAISY: We used to be so nice and friendly together when I first came here. You used to talk to me then. ZERO: Maybe she’ll die soon. I noticed she was coughin’ this mornin’. ... ZERO: Lots o’ women would be glad to get me. DAISY: You could look a long time before you’d find a sensible, refined girl like me. ZERO: Yes, sir, they could look a long time before they’d find a steady meal-ticket like me. DAISY: I guess I’d too old to have any kids. They say it ain’t safe after thirty-five.

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ZERO: Maybe I’d marry you. You might be all right, at that. (9-10)

In spite of the apparent disconnectedness of their unconscious thoughts, an irreducible erotic tension is revealed, as their fantasies gradually converge in the prospect of a relationship. The rhythm of Daisy’s reading of figures is accelerated by their growing rapport and, when she mentions the possibility of procreation, Zero unconsciously associates the organic rhythms of romantic interaction with the mechanical rhythms of the machine: “Hey! Hey! Can’t you slow up? What do you think I am —a machine?” (10). Here, the ambivalence of Zero’s statement (the term “machine” may refer to both a sex machine and an adding machine) attests to the connection that exists for Zero between sexual desire and technology. Once Zero is tried and executed for killing his boss, a modern Hermes, who signals the protagonist’s passage to the afterlife, frustrates Zero’s expectations that a sort of deus ex machina will prevent his execution: And now that your course is run —now that the end is already in sight, you still believe that some thunderbolt, some fiery bush, some celestial apparition will intervene between you and extinction. But it’s no use, Zero. You’re done for. (33).

Through this metatheatrical commentary, Rice is not only ironizing Zero’s fate, but also rejecting the ancillary role that machinery occupies in Classical theatre, where its use serves to introduce (and justify) an accounted-for reversal of fate: contrariwise, in The Adding Machine the machine does not introduce a reversal, but rather contributes to maintaining the internal logic (which is in fact rather illogic) of dramatic action. This is very clearly seen when, already in the afterlife, Zero abandons his newly revived relationship with Daisy in order to operate an adding machine in his particular limbo (a place where souls are repaired to be sent back to earth). In this final scene, Zero’s sexual desire (which he was unable to satisfy with Daisy) is sublimated in the solitary, mechanistic operation of the contraption. A celebrated stage set for this scene included the use of a gigantic and enslaving adding machine, designed by Lee Simonson for the Expressionist 1923 Theatre Guild production. Ideologically powerful as it was, this oversized machine does not appear in Rice’s text, which is devoid of the alienating force and caricaturing effect of Simonson’s set. Rather, Zero is content, “absorbed in the operation of an adding machine. He presses the keys and pulls the lever with mechanical precision” (55) in a way which is reminiscent of the mechanistic, monotonous and unproductive motions of the bachelors in

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Marcel Duchamp’s rendition of auto-erotic desire in The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923). Giacomo Balla’s sketches for the machine-characters of the Futurist ballet The Typographic Machine (1915-1916) could also be used as models for the characterization of Zero in this scene: these are robot-like characters or automata that perform the mechanical rhythms of an enormous machine. As Zero pulls the lever, a strip of white paper flows from the machine and fills the room in the form “streamers, festoons, billows of it everywhere” (55), an image that, as in Duchamp’s glass, is suggestive of onanistic satisfaction, rather than of anguished entrapment. Finally, Zero is persuaded to take on a new life on earth by the promise of a “super-hyper-adding machine” (60) and “a blonde with big blue eyes and red lips” (62), images that again bring together technology and sexual desire. The ridiculously detailed description of the high-tech but useless contraption excites and arouses Zero: CHARLES: It will be an adding machine which will be installed in a coal mine and which will record the individual output of each miner. As each miner down in the lower galleries takes up a shovelful of coal, the impact of his shovel will automatically set in motion a graphite pencil in your gallery. The pencil will make a mark in white upon a blackened, sensitized drum. Then your work comes in. With the great toe of your right foot you release a lever which focuses a violet ray on the drum. The ray, playing upon and through the white mark, falls upon a selenium cell which in turn sets the keys of the adding apparatus in motion. (60)

This description resembles the complex and apparently gratuitous mechanisms and instructions of the unproductive eroticized machines of the Avant-Garde, such as those designed by Man Ray and Salvador Dalí. The last play with which this essay deals is Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928), where echoes of Futurism are also felt. For example, concepts and ideas that Treadwell explores in this play had already been anticipated in Mina Loy’s Futurist “Feminist Manifesto” (1914). In relation to this, it is significant that both Loy and Treadwell held friendships with the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and that both became associated with the Provincetown Players around the same time. Loy’s text challenged the generally misogynist stance of the Futurists by appropriating Marinetti’s inflammatory discourse, which she used against the patriarchal structures of society. Like Loy, Treadwell rejects the roles, ties and physical and emotional attachments which women are automatically assigned at birth: by presenting a character who is an inefficient employee, a deficient wife and a dysfunctional mother and

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daughter, Treadwell does away with an enforced cultural heritage with which women are made to comply mechanically and unquestioningly. In her “Manifesto”, Loy despises the concept of “virtue”, by means of which woman is subjected and judged by man: [Virtue] renders her lethargic in the acquisition of intrinsic merits of character by which she could obtain a concrete value. The first selfenforced law for the female sex, as protection against the manmade bogey of virtue (which is the principal instrument of her subjugation) is the unconditional surgical destruction of virginity. (Kolocotroni 260)

Similarly, in Machinal, Treadwell replaces virtue with virtuosity, as her Young Woman is only her own (or truly virtuous) when she performs roles which are not sanctioned by traditional codes, that is, when she takes a lover and when she kills her husband. Furthermore, in those moments, she is not only virtuous, but also free: for example, as Walker has rightly pointed out, the window is only disclosed onstage in episodes 6 and 9 (Walker 220): these are the episodes devoted to her affair and to her execution (her execution symbolically representing the moment of the murder). Scenically, this sort of freedom through the window contrasts with the seclusion into which the Young Woman is forced by her husband’s insistence on pulling down the blind. In episode 6, the urban symphony of a bustling street accompanies the Young Woman and her lover’s affair and, before her execution in episode 9, the “whir of an aeroplane flying” (77), a typically Futurist element, frees her from the patriarchal institutions of religion and marriage: Look, Father! A man flying! He has wings! But he is not an angel! ... He has wings —but he isn’t free! I’ve been free, Father! For one moment — down here on earth- I have been free! When I did what I did I was free! Free and not afraid! How is that, Father? How can that be? A great sin —a mortal sin- for which I must die and go to hell- but it made me free! One moment I was free! (80).

For this scene, a purely Futurist set would seem appropriate: for example, Anton Bragaglia’s Futurist film Thais (1916) makes use of geometrical scenery in order to symbolize the protagonist’s flight of madness, which is similar to the one that takes place at the end of Treadwell’s play. In both the play and the film, this is a moment of punishment for these women, but also a form of freedom. This very brief overview of the desiring mechanisms that are at work in American Expressionist theatre offers, of course, a very partial picture of what happens onstage. We cannot ignore the fact that, although the

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characters in these plays are fascinated by machines (and so were the playwrights!), they are also the victims of a mechanized and dehumanized society: Yank and Zero are exploited by a system that privileges productivity over personal betterment and loyalty; on the other hand, Reuben and the Young Woman are alienated by a patriarchal legacy that denies them love and spirituality in an unsympathetic and inhumane technological world, and they both die electrocuted. However, in the context of the Avant-Garde’s ambivalent treatment of the machine, can we justify the claim that technology is an unambiguous source of fear and anxiety in these plays? There are many Futurist works from which a Marxist reading can be extracted: this is the case, for instance, of Karel ýapek’s 1921 Futurist play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), where the machine is responsible for the extermination of human societies. Also, in Vinicio Paladini and Ivo Pannaggi’s Futurist Mechanical Ballet (1922), the protagonist is a proletarian torn between human and mechanical forces. Another example of ambivalent treatment of technology is Murnau’s Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans (1927), a film that demonizes modernity, but in which a moment of intense (albeit latent) eroticism takes place precisely on a train, the most paradigmatic symbol of modernity. Finally, it would be mistaken to suggest that the machine is an invariably negative element in Marxist thought: in his essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891), Oscar Wilde stressed the beneficial aspects of technological development in a Socialist state: All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man (Guy 246-247)

In view of these and many other examples, the kind of slanted or onesided interpretation of American Expressionist plays to which I have referred at the beginning of this essay seems to reduce the tension between the individual and the machine to an oversimplified Classical conflict between tragic hero and antagonist which does not do justice to the avantgardism of these plays. In fact, many of the features that have been seen as Expressionist in the criticism are not exclusive of Expressionism, or even part of the original texts. In this regard, Julia Walker affirms that the most acclaimed Expressionist elements in these plays were devised by scene designers who were familiar with European Expressionism and that the

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processes of composition and production were “relatively independent” (78). Certainly, the use of typically avant-garde non-realistic (albeit not strictly Expressionist) elements has become generalized in important productions of these plays: choruses and masks in The Hairy Ape, complex mechanisms in Dynamo, geometrical sets in The Adding Machine, and light and mechanical sounds in Machinal. However, it seems that a certain tendency towards naturalistic representation still prevails regarding other less obvious aspects, such as costume, gesture, voice and movement. There is textual evidence that the characters could as well be automata (the adverb “mechanically” is repeated constantly to describe the characters’ reactions in O’Neill’s stage directions in Dynamo and, to a lesser extent, in The Hairy Ape), whose voices are metallic (especially those of the workers in the stokehole in The Hairy Ape), and whose speech and movements are mechanized, automatic, almost robotic (this is very clearly seen in the unnatural interactions of Zero’s guests in the third scene of The Adding Machine and in the Young Woman’s short staccato sentences in Machinal). The question that arises then is: are these characters portrayed onstage as more real, more human, than they actually are in the texts? Certainly, these characters tend to be caricatured, derided and treated with contempt by their authors, who present them as dysfunctional, pusillanimous or deranged puppets. To what extent can we assert that their alienation is caused only by their technological surrounding? In The Hairy Ape, it is Yank’s incapacity to attain a sense of belonging that lies at the core of his tragedy. In Dynamo, Reuben is assailed by a legacy of superstition and Puritan morality which predates his contact with technology, and which he cannot escape: this is indeed the source of his insanity, and not the machine. In The Adding Machine, Zero is unable to establish meaningful relations even after he is dead, and a Darwinian conception of evolution, which overrides Marx’s historical materialism, underlies his alienation: he is a failure now, but he has been a failure in all his previous lives. Finally, in Machinal, ambiguity pervades the only moments at which the Young Woman is free, for this freedom is always made dependable on the figure of the male lover. To use Mina Loy’s terms, the Young Woman does not seem to be able to “destroy in herself the desire to be loved” (Kolocotroni 260). So, in the absence of a proper hero, may the machine be considered the protagonist, unequivocally demonized only in successive Expressionist representations and interpretations of the texts? As I have shown, the plays analyzed here engage in processes of eroticization through which the machine becomes a locus of angst and desire: it is alienating and alluring, desiring and desired, castrator and

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fetish. It is precisely through this ambivalence that these plays retain their aesthetic and ideological significance and centrality in the context of the historical Avant-Garde.

Works Cited Association of American Painters and Sculptors. Documents of the 1913 Armory Show. Lakewood: Hol Art Books, 2009. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. Berghaus, Günter, ed. International Futurism in Art and Literature. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000. —. Futurism and the Technological Imagination. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. ýapek, Karel. R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Translated by Claudia Novack-Jones. London: Penguin, 2004. Danius, Sara. The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception and Aesthetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. Goody, Alex. Technology, Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Polity, 2011. Guy, Josephine M., ed. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Vol. IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hand, John Oliver. “Futurism in America: 1909-1914.” Art Journal 41.4 (1981): 337-342. Holland, Peter and W. B. Worthen, eds. Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Jerz, Dennis G. Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950: Soul and Society in the Age of the Machine. Westport: Greenwood. Kolocotroni, Vassiliki, Jane Goldman and Olga Taxidou, eds. Modernism: An Anthology of Sources. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Meyers, Jeffrey. The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Painters in the Theatre of the European Avant-Garde. Madrid: Aldeasa, 2000. O’Neill, Eugene. Nine Plays. New York: Modern Library, 1954. Panzera, Lisa. “Italian Futurism and Avant-Garde Painting in the United States.” In International Futurism in Art and Literature, edited by Günter Berghaus, 222-243. Berlin: Walter DeGruyter, 2000. Pound, Ezra (1954). Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions.

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Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre and the Language of Rupture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Raine, Lawrence, Christine Poggi and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Rainey, Lawrence S. “The Creation of the Avant-Garde: F. T. Marinetti and Ezra Pound.” Modernism/Modernity 1.3 (1994): 195-220. Riccioti, Dominic. “The Revolution of Urban Transport: Max Weber and Italian Futurism.” American Art Journal 16.1 (1981): 46-64. Rice, Elmer. Three Plays. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997. Treadwell, Sophie. Machinal. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. [1928] Valgemae, Mardi. Accelerated Grimace: Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. Walker, Julia A. Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. White, John J. “Futurism and German Expressionism.” Berghaus, In International Futurism in Art and Literature, edited by Günter Berghaus, 39-74. Berlin: Walter DeGruyter, 2000.

CHAPTER SEVEN TRIANGULAR TRANSGRESSIONS: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ THE PURIFICATION’S DEBT TO FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA’S BLOOD WEDDING JOSÉ I. BADENES LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

A love triangle is defined as a romantic relationship involving three people where there is jealousy between two of the persons in the triangle because they both desire the third character comprising it. The love triangle is a popular and often-used theme in the entertainment industry. Romantic fiction of every kind—opera, soap operas, romantic comedies, romance novels—with its plots of love and passion fueled by forbidden desire resort to it in order to attract and secure audiences and readers. The theater is no exception. From its earliest Western roots in classical Hellenic tragedies, theater has exploited the love triangle in myriad ways. Spaniard Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) and American Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) are among the many playwrights who have deployed the love triangle. In their plays, desire, at the base of every love triangle, is an operative term. Theirs is a dramaturgy of desire which employs sex “as a fundamental subversion of the established order of things… [with] sexuality as a metaphor for freedom” (Johnston 27). Therefore, in their works, the love triangle plot takes on new meaning. It is used to expose and deconstruct old or mistaken morals and explain with live examples man’s everlasting laws having to do with his heart and feelings. (García Lorca, Obras Completas III 255)1

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Two examples of love triangles comprised of two men vying for the same woman are found in Williams’ early one-act play The Purification (1944) and Lorca’s passionate rural tragedy Blood Wedding (1933). Though Williams never mentions it in his correspondence, personal entries, and interviews, The Purification’s content and style owe a great deal to Blood Wedding, as several scholars have pointed out. For example, the Critical Companion to Tennessee Williams (2005) notes with regard to The Purification that [w]ith its rhythmical language, ritualized actions, chorus of women and music, Williams effectively utilizes devices García Lorca mastered in such works as Blood Wedding. (213)

Felicia Hardison Londré, among others, also mentions the connection in the section devoted to The Purification in her book Tennessee Williams (1979): The imagery used in The Purification is the same as that used in Lorca’s poetic tragedies of the early 1930s: water, moon, earth, blood, the horse… (41)

The current essay examines the love triangle plot in these two plays in light of these playwrights’ dramaturgy of desire in order to highlight the influence Lorca had on Williams. The hidden relations implicit in these triangles demonstrate Lorca’s impact on Williams. It was while attending Washington University in St Louis (1935-1936) that Williams met Clark Mills, a French scholar who was also a poet. According to Nancy Tischler and Allean Hale, Mills introduced the author to “Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, along with Lorca and Rilke” (143). Williams was probably also exposed to Lorca while a student in the Department of Speech and Dramatic Arts at the University of Iowa (19371938), where students were expected to read ninety plays (144). Certainly by 1947 he was very familiar with Lorca, as his letter to Margo Jones dated December 31, 1947 attests: “I also have Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot…my Crane and Lorca’s poems” (Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2 (140). José A Weissman’s English translation of Blood Wedding as Bitter Oleander did not appear in the United States until 1935. It was performed off-Broadway at the Lyceum Theater in New York City by the Neighborhood Playhouse. Williams hardly knew any Spanish, therefore he could not have read this play before that year. However, given the modernity of the University of Iowa’s Department of Speech and Dramatic

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Arts’ curriculum under the direction of Edward C. Mabie, it is likely that Williams could have had access to an English translation of the play. In a letter to his mother dated October 29, 1937, Williams writes that he “had to read ten long plays [that] week” (Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume 1 112). Blood Wedding may have been one of them. Lorca would certainly have made the news at the time. In July 1936, he was killed by Fascist forces at the outset of the Spanish Civil War (19361939). This event impacted Williams because it was around this time that he wrote the globally-conscious short story “In Spain There Was Revolution”. In fact, the socially-conscious final speech of the story’s protagonist finds its way eventually to the one-act play Act of Love as well as Tom Wingfield’s opening speech in The Glass Menagerie, both written during the first half of the 40s and the Second World War: In Spain there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion. In Spain there was Guernica. Here there were disturbances of labor, sometimes pretty violent, in otherwise peaceful cities” (Moschovakis and Roessl 55)

Since The Purification was probably written between 1940 and 1941, Lorca’s works would have been an influence. However, there is no explicit mention of the Spanish author in his letters at the time connected with the play. Williams recounts in his Memoirs how he was inspired to write the play. He was at Provincetown the summer of 1940, having fallen in love with the dancer Kip Kiernan— I remember that the first day after the first night, when we were crossing the dunes to the ocean-side cabin of a dance critic, Kip and I lingered behind the others in the party and Kip said to me: ‘Last night you made me know what is meant by beautiful pain.’ (55)

Williams goes on to say that [he] had set up a little writing-table, a wooden box with [his] portable on it, and in that play [he] found a release, in words, of the ecstasy of the affair. And also a premonition of its doom. (55)

According to Williams, that play was The Purification—“In that loft I wrote my only verse-play “The Purification”” (55). However, Williams’ biographer Lyle Leverich says that what the author wrote that night may have been a first draft since in his journal “he attributes the origin of The Purification to a date in the spring of 1941” (n364).

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Donald Spoto, another Williams’ biographer, claims that Williams started to write the play as early as the late summer and early fall of 1939 while in St Louis visiting his family upon his return from California and New Mexico. According to Spoto, the play was a way to vent his anger at what had been done to Williams’ sister Rose, as well as his guilty feelings regarding his closeness to her. Rose Williams had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized at an asylum since 1937 when she accused her father Cornelius of sexual improprieties. As a result, she had a prefrontal lobotomy towards the end of that year with her parents’ consent and unbeknownst to Williams, who discovered it when he returned home from Iowa for the Christmas holidays. The play was “a shout of outrage about the Williams family madness, a cry of hatred against his parents for what they had done to Rose…” (75). Spoto claims that in The Purification Williams dramatized an aspect of his life at the time. The play did not see the light until 1944, when it was published by New Directions under the title Dos Ranchos, or the Purification. A year later and under the shortened title of The Purification, it appeared in Twenty-seven Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One-Act Plays, Williams’ collection of thirteen one-act plays. That same year the play opened at the Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Williams’ friend Margo Jones, though only for three performances. Its stage success had to wait until 1954, when it reopened at Jones’ own Theatre 54 in Dallas, directing it in a double bill with Jean Giraudoux’s The Apollo of Bellac. The Purification is a one-act verse-play in three scenes. Its action takes place in a courtroom in a small Southwestern American town reminiscent of Taos, New Mexico, where Williams had spent part of the summer of 1939 visiting D.H. Lawrence’s widow Freida. A murder has been committed in the midst of a terrible draught. Elena, from the Casa Blanca family, has been killed by her husband, Moreno the Rancher, from the Casa Roja family. Elena’s family demands justice and a trial is convoked with one of the townspeople serving as Judge. Rosalio, the Son, Elena’s brother, tells the court about his sister, about her free-spiritedness, and how she was married to the Rancher against her will. At the end of Rosalio’s narrative he has a vision of Elena all in white that only he sees. Subsequently, Luisa, the Indian servant of Casa Roja, reveals that the Son and Elena were incestuous lovers prompting the Son to declare that Elena was killed by the Rancher with an axe. The Rancher then tells the court that he killed Elena because he discovered his wife and her brother having sex in the barn. At this point, the Rancher has a vision of Elena, very different to the one Rosalio had seen, where Elena tells the Rancher to let her go. Enraged, Rosalio defends Elena’s reputation and sees her once

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again. After she vanishes, he pulls out a knife and stabs himself as the purification for his deed. In turn, the Rancher, at Rosalio’s Mother’s invitation, takes out his own knife, rejecting the one the Mother offers him, goes outside, and kills himself to redeem his murder. At this moment, rain falls. The drought is over since honor has been restored. Lorca wrote Blood Wedding in 1932. The play premiered at the Teatro Beatriz in Madrid in 1933 to great acclaim, catapulting the Spaniard into international stardom. His inspiration for the work was an event that he read in a newspaper a few years before: that of a bride who left her groom the morning of their wedding to run away with her cousin, leading to fatal consequences. However, the work transcends these events to become a reflection on the power of instinct, destiny, and death. It is one of Lorca’s better-known works. Together with Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba it is part of his so-called “rural trilogy”. The play is set in three acts, each of which is divided into scenes. Like The Purification, it is also about feuding families. The Felix family has killed the husband and older son of the Mother, who is obsessed with the instrument of their deaths, the knife. She has one son left, the Bridegroom, soon to be married to the Bride, and fears for his life. The Bride’s former suitor, Leonardo, who was rejected because he was poor, belongs to the Felix clan and is married with a family of his own. However, the passion between Leonardo and the Bride has not died, since he visits her in the evenings and exhausts his horse getting there. The day of the wedding, the Bride runs away with Leonardo. Pressed by his mother, the Bridegroom rushes after them, but when he finds them, the two men fight with knives and kill one another. The Bride then goes back to the Mother and the other women, but is rejected by them. The play ends with the Mother lamenting the death of her son, her premonition fulfilled, since he too was killed by a member of the Felix family. Besides its Hispanic flavor, The Purification owes Blood Wedding many of its structural elements, such as technique, themes, images, and characters. First, both plays deviate from the naturalistic productions typical of the commercial theater of their times. Music, dance, and choruses, for example, are an integral part of both dramas. Second, the real and the fantastic mingle in the two plays. In The Purification both Rosalio and the Rancher have visions of the dead Elena, whereas in the first scene of the third act of Blood Wedding the Woodcutters, the Moon and the Beggarwoman, all symbols of death, bring about a dream-like and ghostly dimension to the play. Third, both plays share a theme. Like the rest of Lorca’s and Williams’ works, the two tragedies are about the inevitability and consequences of desire. Both communicate the idea that no matter

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how transgressive and, despite the consequences, one’s deepest instincts need to be listened to and followed. Desire and death are thus intertwined. Fourth, The Purification and Blood Wedding share the same images and motifs which are symbolically connected to the theme: land, heat, aridity, water, blood, honor, the moon, the horse, and the knife. Lastly, the main characters and how they relate to one another within their triangles reflect each other’s personality and drives, though not according to their gender: Leonardo, the Bride, and the Bridegroom mirror Elena, Rosalio, and the Rancher respectively. Leonardo is Lorca’s most passionate male character. If he is the only one with an individual name in Blood Wedding, it is to highlight his individualistic and passionate nature, which is contained in his name: León-ardo, the ardent lion. The horse he rides is an extension of his masculine, forceful personality that knows no boundaries. His looks and his character therefore overpower the Bride’s will—“Oh, I look at you and your beauty sears me” (García Lorca 1977, 88)—that cannot help but run away with him. Leonardo’s counterpart in The Purification is neither one of the two main male characters but Elena. She, like him, also has a proper name. The Son describes her as someone who would go “beyond all fences” (Williams 35), a free spirit who could not be contained neither physically at home nor emotionally in her desire. The ardor of her passionate nature would seek the “spring freshets she bathed in, naked, clasping her groin rigidly, with both palms, against the cold immaculate kiss of snow-water” (34-35) in order to dull her “tainted” desires. Leonardo does the same— Because I tried to forget you and put a wall of stone between your house and mine… And when I saw you in the distance I threw sand in my eyes” (García Lorca 1977, 87).

Neither can resist the desire they feel. Elena could not quench her passion for Rosalio, her brother, and lay with him night after night until she met her death. It is the same for Leonardo whose “horse went straight to [the Bride’s] door” (87) and whose “red blood [turned] black” (87) as a consequence—“sangre mala” (Williams 43) is what Luisa in The Purification calls it. Both Leonardo and Elena follow their instinct, but with fatal consequences. The Bridegroom in Blood Wedding contrasts with Leonardo. Whereas Leonardo is virile, passionate and rebellious, the Bridegroom is dependent, conventional and weak. He is close to his Mother—“I’ll always obey you!” García (Lorca 76)—who wishes he were a woman—“I’d like it if you were a woman” (35)—and describes him to the Bride’s Father as if he

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were one—“My son is handsome. He’s never known a woman. His good name cleaner than a sheet spread out in the sun” (50). The Bridegroom is also sexually inexperienced since his Mother advises him on his wedding night how he ought to behave with his bride—“Try to be loving with your wife…just so she’ll feel you’re the man” (76). He fails to inspire passion in the Bride, who describes him to his Mother as “a little bit of water” (96). The Bridegroom’s unrequited passion parallels the Rancher. The Rancher “burned” (Williams 50) for Elena. His “lips are dry” and his “hands are empty—starved” (52) for her love. However, Elena resists his advances—“But keep your hands off me!” (52)—just as the Bride rejects the Bridegroom on their wedding day. Both men marry women who do not want them. Originally, as the Judge tells him, the Rancher was “gentle— withdrew too much from the world” (56)—a shy man, almost like the Bridegroom. But “the lack of what he desired twist[ed] [the] man out of his nature…breeding a need for destruction” (56). It is a portrait of what the Bridegroom would have become if he had remained married to the Bride. Image and reputation—honor—compel the Bridegroom to seek out his wife and her lover. He fights Leonardo and dies in the struggle. Jealousy leads the Rancher to kill Elena upon discovering her with her brother. However, personal integrity—his honor—inspires him to atone for his guilty deed by killing himself with a knife during the trial. Both the Bridegroom and the Rancher are victims of their unrequited love and die following the honor code, whether understood as public reputation or personal integrity. The Bride in Blood Wedding is caught between her duty and her desire, what society expects of her and her fatal attraction. She knows that her duty is to be with her new husband, yet she cannot help going away with Leonardo—“I didn’t want to. Your son was my destiny and I have not betrayed him, but the other one’s arm dragged me along” (García Lorca 1977, 96). She wants and rejects Leonardo simultaneously—“I love you! I love you! But leave me!” (87), but her instinct is more powerful than her will. Just as the Bridegroom is weak and is described by his Mother in feminine terms, the Bride is strong and is described by her Father in masculine terms—“she can cut a strong cord with her teeth” (50). Therefore, it is not surprising that it is she who takes the initiative to run away with Leonardo, as he tells her: Who was it first went down the stairway?... And who was it who put a new bridle on the horse?... And whose were the hands that strapped spurs to my boots? (86-87).

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But the Bride knows the consequences of her actions for a woman in her society—“It’s fitting that I should die here, with water over my feet, with thorns upon my head…a woman lost and virgin” (89). She, like Leonardo, pays the price for following her instinct. However, whereas Leonardo’s punishment is physical death, hers is social. She is ostracized. Rosalio, the Son in The Purification, exhibits the same blend of feminine and masculine characteristics as the Bride. On the one hand, he is poetic—“I think he can speak, but in the language of vision” (Williams 34). The tenderness with which he talks about Elena recalls the Bridegroom’s sensitivity towards the Bride—“When I leave your side I feel great emptiness, and something like a knot in my throat” (52). On the other hand, he, like Leonardo, is impetuous—“race[s] and race[s] through the mountain larches until exhaustion stop[s] him” (38) and sensuous— “How shall I describe the effect that a song had on us?... Our genitals were too eager” (41). Others consider him crazy—“The youth is demented” (37). Yet, he, like the Bride, is conscious of his deed and is remorseful— “Yes, I am shameless, shameless” (45). They both need to confess their sin before others and atone for it. However, whereas the Bride’s punishment is ostracism, Rosalio pays for his deed by killing himself—“Witness—in this thrust—our purification” (60). The plays’ love triangles deviate from conventional arrangements in order to deconstruct attitudes towards desire and sexuality. It is true that incest is not present in Blood Wedding. The topic was autobiographical due to Williams’ guilty feelings regarding his inordinate attachment to his sister Rose. However, Lorca’s influence should not be ruled out altogether on this subject. Though not found in Blood Wedding, incest is present in the poem “Thamar and Amnon” from Lorca’s own Gypsy Ballads (1928). Some Lorca critics claim that this particular poetry collection was a precursor to his rural play “for, although [Blood Wedding’s] characters may not be gypsies, it possesses all the anguish and the tragic spirit” (Edwards 96) found in those poems. The ballad of Thamar and Amnon is based on the biblical account regarding David’s son Amnon’s passion for his sister Thamar. Replete with obscure Surrealist imagery, the poem links the forbidden passion with nature, particularly through the images of a masculine sun and a feminine moon that symbolize the siblings. However, whereas in The Purification Elena and Rosalio share the passion they feel, it is not so in the poem. In the ballad, as in the Bible, the incestuous desire is not reciprocated. Thamar does not requite her brother’s illicit love. Therefore, consumed by desire, the young man feigns illness. When his sister comes to his room to care for him he rapes her. His affront accounts for his death. His brother

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Absalom has him killed. The sin is atoned; there is purification. Though Williams does not mention this specific poem by name, he could have read it, since he was familiar with Lorca’s poems, as his letter to his friend Margo Jones dated December 31, 1947, quoted earlier, attests. The Gypsy Ballads, where the poem of Thamar and Amnon is found, was one of Lorca’s most popular books of poems. In addition, Lorca was writing a play, The Destruction of Sodom or Lot’s Daughters, which he never completed and has yet to be found, which touched upon the theme of incest. In the play, based on the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the frustration of homosexual desire leading to incest. In order to prevent the men of Sodom from having sexual intercourse with the angelic visitors God has sent to take him and his family away from the sinful city, Lot offers his two daughters to the Sodomites in exchange for his celestial visitors’ freedom. However, while same sex relations never take place, incest does. At the end, Lot and his family are brought safely out of the city, but Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying Yahveh’s command not to turn around. As Sodom is razed to the ground, Lot’s daughters take turns to lie with their father with the hope of providing him with male progeny. Lorca comments: What a magnificent thesis! Jehovah destroys the city for the sin of Sodom and the result is incest. What a lesson against the injustice of judgment, and with the two sins, what a manifestation of the power of sex (Byrd 56).

It is interesting, therefore, to note the presence of incest in both Lorca and Williams. As an extreme form of illicit desire, it stands for all passion that is intrinsic, thus inevitable and inescapable, regardless whether it is expressed or not. However, it is also forbidden and condemned by the law. Incest is therefore fatal. The same holds true for homosexuality at the time Lorca and Williams lived. Homosexuality, like incest, was considered an aberrant and illicit passion. Both Lorca and Williams felt the tension raging inside themselves between their passion for men and society’s punishment for expressing such desires publicly. Not yielding to them would rob them of a full life. However, following their inclination would guarantee social death. It is the overall theme of their works, as they channel their conflict creatively through art. Intrinsic, inevitable, forbidden, fatal desire, of which incest is an extreme example, is a metaphor for same-sex desire in Lorca and Williams. Violence and death permeate The Purification and Blood Wedding, as actions do not go unpunished. Death is intertwined with desire because

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desire ends in death. Though certainly a reflection of society’s erotophobia in general and homophobia in particular, the need for punishment and atonement present in these two plays (and for that matter in Lorca’s and Williams’ work at large) is also due to the authors’ internalization of society’s erotophobic and homophobic discourse. At the same time that the characters in the plays, as their creators, need to follow their instincts or else dry up, there is also a self-punitive mechanism in them that demands violent atonement and purification for what they have done. This atonement takes many forms, as varied as Lorca’s and Williams’ plays. Guilty feelings around desires were common to both Lorca and Williams. The guilt that they felt demanded of them some kind of sacrificial atonement, and this explains the violence and death seen in many of their plays. For instance, in Lorca’s Yerma, the protagonist kills her husband with her bare hands for not giving her a child, while in his Love of Don Perlimplín the main character kills himself for his beloved so that she may have a soul. The same dynamic can be seen in Williams. For example, in Sweet Bird of Youth, Chance Wayne is castrated at the end of the play by Boss Finley’s henchmen for having infected Finley’s daughter Heavenly during sexual intercourse, while in Suddenly Last Summer Sebastian Venable is cannibalized by the youths he had procured in the town of Cabeza del Lobo. In both Blood Wedding and The Purification, it is death by a sharp object, the instrument of sacrificial rites in many religions. The love triangle in Blood Wedding is not incestuous, but is just as transgressive though not in a conventional way either; it is homoerotic, not realistically but metaphorically. In the play, just as in The Purification, going against the status quo demands atonement through sacrificial immolation. In Williams’ play all three characters in the triangle atone for their deeds through death by a sharp object. In Lorca’s tragedy, the two men are the sacrificial victims when they kill each other with knives. However, they are not seen separately, but as one. It is interesting to note that though the title of the play mentions a wedding, there is no wedding to be seen. There is action before and after the wedding, but spectators do not see the ceremony onstage. In addition, the title mentions blood. Associated with the wedding, it could refer to the bloodshed by the virgin bride on her wedding night, but such blood has not been shed because the Bride in the play remains a virgin. If any blood has been spilled it has been in the knife fight that has killed both rivals. The juxtaposition of the terms “blood” and “wedding” seems then to suggest that the wedding that has taken place is connected to the fight between the two men and not to the wedding of the Bridegroom and the Bride, which is not seen because it is not relevant since it is a social

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convention and not because of love and passion. However, as far as the text is concerned, Leonardo and the Bridegroom are not attracted to nor sexually involved with each other, except that the two want the Bride. In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick talks about the fluidity of male-to-male desire, men’s anxieties with regard to homoeroticism and homosexuality, and the discontinuous relation between the two. According to Sedgwick, desire in male-to-male relations flows in a continuum between what she calls “homosocial” desire, where desire for another man is not experienced as erotic (though it may flow in that direction), and homosexual desire, where the erotic and sexual feelings of one man for another are made clear. However, because of the homosexual panic patriarchal homophobia sows in heterosexual males, the flow of male desire is unstable. She locates this panic, for instance, in the relationship between the men in a love triangle. Sedgwick anchors her interpretation of the love triangle in Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire where a male subject’s desire for a female object fuels another male’s covetousness for her, arguing that the rivalry between them is not so much about the desired object but about the desiring individuals. For Sedgwick, the woman in a triangle functions as the mediator between the men and defuses the threat posited by homoerotic desire. In Blood Wedding, it could be argued that the intensity of both men’s passion for the Bride is more about them than about her. The knife fight brings the two men’s bodies together very much like man and wife come together physically during their wedding night. The mutual piercing with knives can be seen metaphorically as sexual penetration. As their dead bodies are brought in, they are described as mirror images of one another: “Young and dark, the one/ Young and dark, the other” (García Lorca 1977, 99). This fusion is eroticized when the Mother refers to them at the end of the play as “los dos hombres del amor”. Most English versions translate the line as “two men killed each other over love” (104). However, Langston Hughes’ classic translation into English picked up the fusion of the two bodies and the implied hidden homoeroticism in the text when he translated it as “two men in love” (70). In a way, the heterosexual couple that Leonardo and the Bride represent is replaced by the same-sex pair fused into one, but dead. According to Lorca critic Paul Julian Smith, this is the reason why spectators do not see the fight—the blood wedding— that brings the two desiring male bodies together. Precisely because the object is the eroticized pierced male body with its homoerotic resonance, it cannot be allowed to appear onstage. It must be withdrawn from consciousness. This blood wedding is the climax of the drama and is

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meant to be the real focus of the play. However, it must be hidden because of social conventions. This is not so in Carlos Saura’s 1981 film based on Alfredo Manas’ adaptation of Blood Wedding into a flamenco ballet. In this reworking of the tragedy, the knife-fight between Leonardo and the Bridegroom is shown and is the climactic point of the performance. It is a stylized piece which highlights the similarity between the two men in how they look— dark hair and bronzed skin, what they wear—tight black pants, reddish sash and half open white shirts, and how they move. They are mirror images of each other, as the text makes them seem once dead. Their slowmotion combative pas de deux emphasizes the homoeroticism implicit in the text through the sensuality of their movements, the proximity of their bodies, and the phallic sharp objects in their hands. Their battle is presided over by the Bride. She stands at the apex of the fatal triangle lamenting the scene she is witnessing. However, she is not a part of it since the physical action is taking place between the men, who now only have eyes for each other. The whiteness of her attire does not only allude to her virginity and her wedding, but also connects her with the death-dealing pale moon. In the play, the androgynous Moon illumines the scene so that the two men find each other and fight over the Bride. In Saura’s version, the Bride and the Moon have blended into one since both are responsible for bringing the two men together and causing their deaths. Sedgwick’s triangular model of man-to-man desire with woman as commodity is brought out in this version of the play. Lorca and Williams come closely together in Blood Wedding and The Purification. Though Williams’ play is not a carbon copy of Lorca’s rural drama, there are many elements showing the influence the Spaniard had on Williams, not to mention their dramaturgy of desire as seen through their unconventional love triangles. In The Purification, the fatal relationship between Elena, the Son and the Rancher is driven by incest whereas in Blood Wedding, a metaphoric homoerotic subtext underlies the triangle Leonardo, the Bride and the Bridegroom comprise. The unconventionality reflects a desire to deconstruct norms associated with gender and sexuality. However, an in-built mechanism of guilt demands atonement for the transgression, staged as ritual sacrifices of immolation. As his biographers testify, Williams read and admired Lorca. However, as Christopher Brian Weimer has noted the extent to which Federico García Lorca’s works influenced Tennessee Williams’ creative output remains a largely neglected question, often passed over in favor of Williams’ debt to Anton Chekov and D.H. Lawrence. (67)

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This is largely true. For example, in Matthew C. Roudané’s “Introduction” to The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, Lorca’s name is absent from the roster of authors the editor of this collection of essays names as influences on Williams. Moreover, in one of the essays in the collection which deals specifically with authors who influenced Williams, aptly titled “Creative Rewriting: European and American Influences on the Dramas of Tennessee Williams”, by Gilbert Debusscher, the Spaniard’s name is once again omitted. Yet, in an article written for The New York Times Magazine on December 7, 1947, journalist R.C. Lewis mentions, based on an interview with Williams, that [a]mong his favorite writers are Chekhov and the Spanish poet and dramatist García Lorca and it is probable that they, more than any others, have contributed to his own particular style. (28)

The fact that many scholars have recognized the link between The Purification and Blood Wedding in passing, devoting little time to it, demonstrates this unconscious neglect. This essay, therefore, recognizes the importance of Federico García Lorca as an important influence in Tennessee Williams’ dramaturgy by bringing together the two plays where the connection between the two authors is most obvious, especially in their transgressive deployment of the popular love triangle.

Works Cited Byrd, Suzanne. “Paneroticism: A Progressive Concept in the Final Trilogy of García Lorca.” García Lorca Review 3 (1975): 53-56. Debusscher, Gilbert. “Creative Rewriting: European and American Influences on the Dramas of Tennessee Williams.” The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudané. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 167-188. Devlin, Albert J., and Nancy M Tischler, eds. The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams Volume 1 (1920-1945). New York: New Directions, 2000. —. The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume 2 (1945-1957). New York: New Directions, 2004. Edwards, Gwynne. Lorca: Living in the Theatre. London: Peter Owen, 2003. García Lorca, Federico. Blood Wedding in Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma and Bernarda Alba. Translated by James GrahamLujín and Richard L. O’Connell. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. 34-99. [1935]

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—. Obras completas, 4 volúmenes. Ed. Miguel García-Posada. Volumen 3. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores/ Galaxia Gutemberg, 1996-1997. Hughes, Langston, trans. Blood Wedding. Federico García Lorca. Blood Wedding and Yerma. New York: Theater Communications Group, 1994. 1-70. Johnston, David. Federico García Lorca. Bath, England: Absolute Press, 1998. Leverich, Lyle. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.1995. Lewis, R.C. “A Playwright Named Tennessee Williams.” Conversations with Tennessee Williams. Ed. Albert J. Devlin. Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. 25-29. Londre, Felicia Hardison. Tennessee Williams. New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co, 1979. Moschovakis, Nicholas and David Roessel. “Williams, Tennessee: In Spain there was Revolution.” Hudson Review 56:1 (Spring 2003): 5056. Roudané, Matthew C. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C Roudane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 1-10. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Smith, Paul Julian. “Black Wedding: García Lorca, Langston Hughes, and the Translation of Introjection.” The Theatre of García Lorca: Text, Performance, Psychoanalysis. Cambridge University Press, 1998. 4470. Smith-Howard, Alycia and Greta Heintzelman. Critical Companion to Tennessee Williams: A Literary reference to his Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Books, 2005. Spoto, Donald. The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1997. Tischler, Nancy and Allean Hale. “What Was He Reading?” Tennessee Williams Annual Review 8 (2006): 137-147. Weimer, Christopher Brian. “Journeys from Frustration to Empowerment: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and its Debt to García Lorca’s Yerma.” Modern Drama 35.4 (December 1992): 520-529. Williams, Tennessee. Memoirs. New York: New Directions, 2006. —. The Purification 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One-Act Plays. New York: New Directions, 1953. 29-62.

CHAPTER EIGHT UNDER HOUSE ARREST: THE FAMILY IN AMERICAN DRAMA HENRY I. SCHVEY WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

In Puritan America, the family was of crucial importance to the individual’s survival. Its main duty was to keep the rest of society and the outside world at bay; as Philippe Aries points out, “The modern family…cuts itself off from the world and opposes to society the isolated group of parents and children” (Scanlan 20). In a culture primarily agrarian in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the family farm represented an idealized refuge, a utopian “bridge between a potentially despotic government on one hand, and anarchical nature on the other” (Scanlan 29). Being part of a family, owning property and tilling the soil oneself epitomized the good life. Thomas Jefferson, then Vice-President, wrote: Environed here in scenes of constant torment, and obloquy, worn down in a station where no effort to do men service can avail anything, I feel not that existence is a blessing, but when something calls my mind to my family or farm (Scanlan 28).

In his Letters from an American Farmer, St. John Crevecoeur writes that the activity of plowing the fields with his son is “inferior only to the emperor of China ploughing as an example to his kingdom” (Scanlan 30). In a book entitled, The Young Husband, written in 1838 and running to more than twenty editions by 1855, the idea of family is eulogized, almost mythologized, as a scene of domestic bliss presided over by its benevolent patriarch: Arrived home, [the young husband] meets again, with joy, his little family group, assembled in his earthly paradise. Supper being over, the fireside

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Is it any wonder, when this ideal of a close-knit, stable, self-sustaining, secure, and patriarchal family is elevated to the level of near-religious ecstasy, and that the essential story of American drama was—and still is— family? This essay will examine what happens when (in the drama of the mid-and late-twentieth century) this once stable social order has shifted into uncertainty, incoherence and chaos. Instead of a utopian vision, in the twentieth century, American family drama depicts a world where agrarian ideals are absent, fathers unavailable, children rebel, family bonds are shattered, and the formerly unified family unit has become a prison: Tyrone: I’m not your jailer. This isn’t a prison. Mary: No. I know you can’t help thinking it’s a home. (Long Day’s Journey into Night 77)

These lines (spoken by James Tyrone and his wife Mary in the second act of what is arguably the single most important and influential American play ever written, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night) are followed by Mary’s words, “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t mean to be bitter. It’s not your fault” (Long Day’s Journey 77), after which she turns and disappears through the back parlor leaving James and his two sons in stunned silence. This moment is deliberately echoed in the final moments of the play, when Mary re-enters in morphine-induced haze trailing her wedding gown behind her, seemingly returned to the place she has wanted to inhabit all along, a past where she imagines she was happy. The effect is of turning the tables; a prisoner locking her jailers into her own cell. While Tyrone’s first words about home not being a prison may be factually true, Mary’s response and the subsequent stage directions indicate that at another level their home has indeed metamorphosed into a prison, at least for her, and that the notion of “home” as an environment offering security and happiness is no longer valid. It is not even what it was in Robert Frost’s celebrated poem, “The Death of the Hired Man,” where home is “the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in” (Frost 53). The image of home from the previous century has vanished; in its stead, it has become toxic, alien, imprisoning. The narrative arc that forms the indisputable connective tissue of modern American drama is its preoccupation, even obsession, with the home. While other national traditions in the theatre may or may not choose to set their stories in the family, American plays are uniquely obsessed

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with the secrecy, dysfunction and sense of imprisonment which takes place within the confines of the home. In no other theatrical tradition, with the possible exception of ancient Greece—where the idea of an inescapable family curse informs the core of so many of the surviving plays of Aeschylus (The Oresteia) and Sophocles (The Oedipus Cycle)— does the idea of a family curse play such a vital role as it does in American drama. In play after play, and by virtually every major playwright from O’Neill well into our own century with recent Pulitzer Prize winning plays like Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County (2008) or Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park (2010), family functions as a source of threat and confinement, if not outright menace. Viewing American drama from this perspective, it is remarkable to observe how many of our stories are set in a home which functions like a prison: a place where inhabitants are kept under watch or are barred from the outside world. There are secrets held within its doors, and they are tenaciously guarded. And often the family punishes those trying to escape with death, literal or metaphorical. As suggested above, the work of O’Neill from first to last is an attempt to come to terms with the notion of his home. From the early Beyond the Horizon, a tragedy set on a farm run by a son who longs to go “beyond the horizon,” but is instead coerced into staying at home to plow the fields— destroying himself, the farm and his family through this wrong choice. Through Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, O’Neill offers a deterministic and fundamentally tragic view of the possibility of what it means to leave family behind. O’Neill’s biographer, Louis Sheaffer, noted that Long Day’s Journey had “the longest gestation period of any of his works; it was the play he, unconsciously, was aching to write when he turned playwright” (Sheaffer 505). Sheaffer argues that the father of American drama never really ‘left’ his parents. An eternal son, forever haunted by the past, he was obsessed by familial relations, particularly those between child and parent. For all his wanderings and varied experiences as a young man, he found his predominant, most fruitful theme at home. (Sheaffer 506)

It might be argued that O’Neill is the exception rather than the norm. However, the notion of family as a repository of secrets is present in the work of so many other American playwrights that it can hardly be attributed merely to O’Neill’s singular obsession. Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1947), unlike most family plays, is set outside in the backyard as opposed to within the Keller home. The world of the play seems to project post-World War II middle-class affluence and optimism. However, even though we never see the Keller home from within, Miller’s use of

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backyard ingeniously reveals something quite important; indeed the location is a carefully contrived metaphor for a family that chooses life outside because it has something to hide within. Using the ubiquitous back porch as the place in which small town American families gathered to socialize in the period following the Second World War, the play’s surface harmonies in fact reveal a hidden repository of secrets and dysfunction. Early in Act One, Miller suggests the hidden agenda of the play when the young boy Bert comes over to the Keller home asking, “Can I see the jail now?” Joe Keller’s reply is revealing: Keller: Seein’ the jail ain’t allowed, Bert. You know that. Bert: Aw, I betcha there isn’t even a jail. I don’t see any bars on the cellar windows. Keller: Bert, on my word of honor, there’s a jail in the basement. I showed you my gun, didn’t I? Bert: But that’s a hunting gun. Keller: That’s an arresting gun! (All My Sons 12).

As with Long Day’s Journey, there is no literal jail within the Keller home, and at this early point in the play the audience may laugh at the reference to jail and guns because the line is spoken by a child and we are enveloped in the cozy atmosphere of post-war America. But the world Miller depicts, so seemingly harmonious and idyllic, is in fact all about secret prisons. On one level, there is a literal prison. We learn that Joe’s decision to ship off defective airplane parts from his factory has resulted in the deaths of 21 pilots, and led to his former partner Steve’s incarceration. We also learn that Joe, whose surviving son Chris describes him as having “a talent for ignoring things,” and whose very name Keller—the word for cellar in German—alludes to his capacity for burying the past. Joe Keller has saved himself by pretending to be sick on the day his crimes were exposed. Although Joe’s neighbors are aware of his guilt, they look the other way and even respect him for being “smart,” and living just as they do, his backyard serving as the hub of neighborhood social activity. We later learn that Keller has indirectly, but no less certainly, caused the death of his older son Larry, who took his own life by crashing his plane rather than endure the shame of his father’s selfishness done in the name of maintaining the family business at all costs and shipping the cracked cylinder heads out to the army. The night before the play begins, a tree planted in Larry’s honor (in that same yard) has blown down in a storm. As with Sophocles’ Oedipus the King or Ibsen’s Ghosts, in All My Sons the sins of the past return to haunt, and ultimately destroy, the family.

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Keller’s justification for sending out the defective airplane parts is his conviction that nothing is bigger than family, and to report the defects to the government would have ruined the family business. Yet this choice has resulted in his losing a son. With extraordinary prescience which foreshadows contemporary debates about Wall Street greed vs. the 99 %, the play contradicts Joe’s certainty that “the world has a forty-foot front, it end[s] at the building line” (All My Sons 74), as opposed to taking responsibility for others who are not his own sons. Immediately prior to Keller’s suicide which ends the play, Joe’s surviving son Chris argues that Once and for all you can know there’s a universe of people outside and you’re responsible to it, and unless you know that you threw away your son because that’s why he died. (All My Sons 84)

Earlier, Joe has defended his ideal with a rhetorical question: if “there’s something bigger than [family], he says, “I’ll put a bullet in my head” (All My Sons 74) Now Miller’s play concludes with Joe’s shooting himself as if in direct response to his own question. Miller’s play raises our awareness that the Keller family conceals a prison within, despite the apparently peaceful exterior of their lives. Analogously, there is a metaphorical prison at the heart of Tennessee Williams’ early autobiographical play, The Glass Menagerie (1945). Unlike the jail imagery that pervades Miller’s play, prison in this lyrical tragedy is found in memory. Although Williams’ stage directions cleverly include a fire escape that, the playwright notes, “contains a touch of accidental poetic truth” (The Glass Menagerie 21), the play’s fundamental situation concerns its narrator’s inability to fly the imprisoning nets of home. True, Tom is shown abandoning home at the end of the play, attempting to follow his father, a “Telephone Man who fell in love with long distances” (The Glass Menagerie 23). However, the entire play is built around the notion that real escape is not possible. Although Tom tells us he went much further than the place his mother has sentenced him (“Go to the moon—you selfish dreamer” [Glass Menagerie 114]), Tom’s final monologue (and the structure of the play as memory), indicate that escape from his sister Laura has proven impossible. In the early Williams’ one-act, “Auto-da-Fe” (1938), there is a young man (Eloi) who, when cornered by his mother’s accusations and his own self-incriminating admissions, deliberately sets fire to his house rather than confess to crimes which he knows he has committed in his heart. In The Glass Menagerie, Tom’s final exit is an equivalent act of confession. Tom’s leaving by the fire escape only underscores the flames he is perpetually engulfed by, having left mother and sister helpless and alone.

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Tom has forged his escape from the family prison by taking the money intended for the light bill to pay his dues to the Merchant Marine. As a result, he has bought his own “freedom” by plunging the family into darkness. In recounting his story to us, the audience realizes that Tom remains trapped within his own world of guilt and ineradicable memory. In the mind, there is no escape; and Williams’ play should be seen as an unsuccessful attempt at expiation. Like the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s poem whose momentary release is only possible only by re-telling his story, Tom cannot leave. As he tells us in his final monologue, his sister’s ghostly presence “came upon me unawares” (Glass Menagerie 97). The pathetic image of his abandoned sister vainly comforted by her mother, it is suggested, will haunt the narrator forever. Although externally he may have succeeded in removing himself from what he describes as a “two-byfour situation” (The Glass Menagerie 45), he is incapable of replicating the sleight of hand achieved by his father or the magician Malvolio to escape a coffin unscathed. Laura may “blow out her candles” (The Glass Menagerie 115) for the audience at the play’s end, but the implication is that the narrator’s purgatory is unending. He will be perpetually haunted: Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night…all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! (The Glass Menagerie 115).

While the metaphor of home as prison surfaces again and again in the American drama of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies—one thinks of plays like Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones (1971), Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother (1983), and August Wilson’s Fences (1984) as prime examples, it is perhaps most clearly delineated in the work of Sam Shepard. Shepard’s work, like that of O’Neill, examines the struggle to free oneself of familial influence. Born Samuel Shepard Rogers III, Shepard was called “Steve” to distinguish himself from seven generations of Rogers males. He attempted to reinvent himself, adopting the name of the Midwestern doctor Sam Sheperd, who murdered his wife in the early 1960s, but the plays of “Steve” Rogers, are one long examination of how disconnection is impossible. As Shepard has observed, What doesn’t have to do with family? There isn’t anything…We all come out of one each other—everyone is born out of a mother and a father, and you go on to be a father. It’s an endless cycle. (Allen 143)

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Shepard’s best work, like that of O’Neill, examines the roots of a family curse, and our attempts to resist its poison. Set on a dried-up artichoke farm in California in a home whose front door has been ripped off its moorings, Curse of the Starving Class ritualistically enacts the impossibility of freeing oneself from a poisonous legacy. The father Weston says to his son Wesley: Weston: My poison scares you. Wesley: Doesn’t scare me. Weston: No? Wesley: No. Weston: Good. You’re growing up. I never saw my old man’s poison until I was much older than you…you know how I recognized it? Wesley: How? Weston: …I saw myself infected with it. That’s how. I saw me carrying it around. His poison in my body (Curse of the Starving Class 167).

In Curse, Shepard has the derelict father and son literally exchange places, but to no avail. At the end of the play, Mother and son describe an eagle carrying a cat in its talons, a metaphor of male and female, fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters, engaged in an inescapable and perpetual dance of destructive conflict: Wesley: And the eagle’s being torn apart in midair. The eagle’s trying to free himself from the cat, and the cat won’t let go. Ella: And they come crashing down to the earth. Both of them come crashing down. Like one whole thing (Curse of the Starving Class 200).

Shepard’s most profound exploration of the knot that binds families together comes in Buried Child, his greatest play. Significantly, it is set on a farm in rural Illinois, America’s heartland, which as we have seen, epitomized what the American family once represented. This farm, however, has not produced corn since 1935. It is an Eliot-like wasteland of sterility, ruled by a sickly patriarch named Dodge (whose very name is suggestive of avoidance and deceit), wife Halie, and their sons Tilden and Bradley. Tilden, the oldest, is “profoundly displaced and burnt out,” and has been reduced to a state of infantile emotional dependency; he has also apparently had an incestuous relationship with Halie, which has resulted in the eponymous “buried child,” a child that Dodge tells us he drowned like the “runt of the litter.” The second son, Bradley, is an amputee who arrives unannounced and cuts his father’s hair with an electric clippers, leaving his scalp lacerated in a symbolic ritual of castration, just as Tilden has symbolically buried his father earlier in the play with husks of corn. Thus

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the farm, once the symbol of America’s glorious agrarian past and the essence of family unity, has now become a house of death. Into this world comes Vince, Dodge’s grandson, along with his girlfriend, Shelly. They are on their way to New Mexico, and have decided to stop in to visit Vince’s father, Tilden. Their entrance initially reveals a home redolent of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers, a world of simple wholesomeness and health. As Shelly says; “Where’s the milkman and the little dog? What’s the little dog’s name? Spot. Spot and Jane. Dick and Jane and Spot” (Buried Child 83). However, instead of middle class wholesome, Vince enters instead a nightmarish world where he cannot be recognized by his grandfather; “Am I in a time warp or something? How could they not have recognized me? How in the hell could they not recognize me! I’m their son!” Dodge’s response is simply, “You’re no son of mine. I’ve had sons in my time and you’re not one of ‘em” (Buried Child 97). Vince runs off to buy his grandfather liquor, tempted by the notion of flight from this living nightmare; instead he returns, and his return is Shepard’s most penetrating image of the imprisoning forces of family: Vince: I studied my face. Studied everything about it. As though I was looking at another man. As though I could see his whole race behind him. Like a mummy’s face. I saw him dead and alive at the same time…And then his face changed. His face became his father’s face. Same bones. Same eyes. Same nose. Same breath. And his father’s face changed to his Grandfather’s face. And it went on like that. Clear on back to faces I’d never seen before but still recognized. Still recognized the bones underneath (Buried Child 130).

Formerly unrecognized and desperate to flee, Vince returns home a different person. Or rather the person he is doomed to be by his past. Cutting his way back into the house with a hunting knife, he crawls through the hole in the screen door. Now ensconced within the ancestral home, Vince orders Shelly to leave and becomes a “buried child,” reborn into the family as the descendant and successor of the House of Dodge. As Dodge himself dies unseen on the floor (having bequeathed all his property to Vince, requesting that his body be burned on a pyre along with all his farming equipment), Vince assumes control, claiming he will buy all new tools. Carrying a bouquet of roses that he lays on his grandfather’s corpse, he drags a blanket off of Bradley’s and places it over Dodge’s body. This symbolic act of burying the past is accompanied by Vince’s lying down on the sofa, arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling; his body is now positioned exactly like his dead grandfather’s.

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The image could not be more evocative or frightening; Dodge is displaced, and Vince (as his name suggests) has returned a conqueror and Dodge’s inevitable successor as patriarch. Yet Shepard’s scrupulous description of Vince’s position on the couch directly alludes to the inevitable consequences of this return—a spiritual death and vicious cruelty we have not seen from him before. And as Vince lies stretched out on Dodge’s couch, the play ends with Tilden re-entering, bearing the muddy corpse of the buried child. Halie, who has not yet seen the results of Tilden’s grisly excavation or Dodge’s death, proclaims the miraculous growth of a stand of corn in the desiccated fields as a miracle: It’s a miracle, Dodge. I’ve never seen a crop like this in my whole life. Maybe it’s the sun. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the sun (Buried Child 132)

The ostensible miracle of rebirth which Halie’s description reveals is directly contradicted by what she has not yet seen, but is about to witness as the curtain falls: the hideous sight of her buried, incestuous child which her son Tilden is carrying up the steps to her room as she speaks her lines. Her final words, and the final words of the play (“Maybe it’s the sun” [Buried Child 132]) are, of course, a deliberate pun, one that ironically undercuts the miraculous with the macabre, the miracle of new birth with dredged up remains. As with so many American plays of the twentieth century, Shepard’s vision of home for offers no possibility of escape, only return and imprisonment. The farm, so often employed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a utopian ideal, has now become a family crypt. As playwrights as various as O’Neill, Miller, Williams, and Shepard reveal, in the mid-and late twentieth century the family home no longer possesses associations of renewal, peace and harmony. However, its theatrical representation in so much of our drama attests to the fact that these images have not lost their power to transfix and capture our deepest fears and anxieties. Family is truly our most compelling American story.

Works Cited Allen, Jennifer. “The Man on the High Horse.” Esquire. Nov. 1988:143. Frost, Robert. “Death of the Hired Man.” In Complete Poems of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964. Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. New York: Penguin, 2000. O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night. New Haven and New York: Yale Univ. Press, 2002. Scanlan, Tom. Family, Drama, and American Dreams. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978.

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Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill Son and Artist. London: Elek Books Ltd., 1974. Shepard, Sam. Buried Child. In Seven Plays. New York: Bantam, 1981. —. Curse of the Starving Class. In Seven Plays. New York: Bantam, 1981. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1970.

CHAPTER NINE ARTHUR MILLER’S PLAYS SEEN FROM A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE: WAS MILLER SEXIST? CHRISTIANE DESAFY-GRIGNARD INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR

From the mid 60s onwards, Miller’s theater bore witness to the slow but irreversible evolution of women’s status in Western society. His reactions to this evolution were positive concerning the woman characters of his own generation, but much more reserved when addressing those of the new one. Even if he showed more compassion to women in his later plays, the ones that lend themselves to a feminist light, it does not mean that his vision of women had changed. It seems that it proceeded more from his wish to keep up with the trend of the world than from the innermost conviction that the evolution of women’s status was something positive. At the end of his life, Miller seemed to have belonged to the category of men who, secretly, would rather have liked women to remain as they were in the past. Masculine domination is so deeply ingrained in our unconscious that we hardly perceive all of its dimensions. It is so much in line with our expectations that we struggle to call it fully into question. (Bourdieu, back cover of Masculine Domination). Let us call Masculine Domination into question in Arthur Miller, whose romance with the theater, compared with that of contemporary American playwrights, was the longest overtime.1 From his Simon Trilogy2 in the 30s, down to his very last plays in the present century, Miller kept putting both men and women on the American stage. Up to the mid fifties, his male characters occupied centre stage, whereas, later, until his death in 2005, centre stage was almost monopolized by his female characters.

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Should the plays of The Simon Trilogy be performed nowadays, they would appear intolerably sexist to contemporary audiences because of the presence in these plays of female characters who had been the acquiescent prisoners of constraints and traditions and whose marriages (like the marriage of Miller’s mother) had been merely a “transaction”. In the 20s and 30s, the word “sexist” did not exist but there were other words to express men’s various attitudes to women: “machismo”, “misogyny”, “phallocracy”. Women were referred to as the weaker sex, at best as the fair sex, which sounded hardly any better since it implied that besides beauty, there was nothing in women but insipidity: The tradition of gallantry masked and to some degree mitigated the organized oppression of women. While males monopolized political and economic power, they made their domination over women more palatable by surrounding them with an elaborate ritual of deference and politesse. (Lash 189).

In those bygone days, women were oppressed. To most of them, renunciation “that is inscribed at the deepest level of the dispositions constituting the habitus” (Bourdieu 79) became a way of living. Over time, the feeling of oppression would vanish. In fact, only the cleverest, the boldest women remained conscious of being relegated to the status of second-rate citizens and decided to act consequently. Miller’s own sexism originated mainly from his mother’s vision of women. The modern gynaeceum that Augusta and her two sisters formed within the family circle in the America of the 20s and 30s, gave him, as a young man, a narrow, dichotomous, Manichean vision of women which persisted in his later works. Narrow, because it was reduced to the family circle of devoted wives; dichotomous and Manichean, because, inside the Miller family, there were the honest married women, and outside, the rest, the unmarried ones, which meant either, the unlucky and honest ones who, with no money, had to work for a meager salary, or the not so honest ones who chose to trade themselves in becoming kept women.3 Yet, it would be too reductive to ascribe Miller’s sexism only to his mother’s influence; for beyond Augusta, there was also the weight of both the Judaic and Christian cultures that present a very negative vision of women. One that Miller would reveal in The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), a play in which, in spite of his obvious deliberate wish to use a humorous tone to desacralize the subject, he reasserted the powerfully antifeminist Jewish tradition. A tradition blithely perpetuated by the Christian one, since not only did he remain faithful to Genesis, but also increased Eve’s responsibility in Man’s Fall. In this respect, Miller’s

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play was in accordance with the various unfavorable interpretations made of the First Woman through the centuries, from St Paul’s in The Epistle to the Corinthians, to Milton’s in Paradise Lost and also Sigmund Freud’s.4 In The Crucible, “Miller’s own dramatic judgment falls heavily upon Abigail Williams” (Valente, 122)5: he turns the pre-pubescent, orphaned servant (who is also Salem parson’s niece) into a sensuous seventeen-yearold one who seduces an honest farmer and respected family man, in the hope that, once estranged from his stern wailing wife, he would give her an easier life and a better social status. When she is dismissed by the deceived spouse, she bewitches several girls younger than herself and organizes a fantastic hoax that sets in motion a collective hysteria. Then, by using false testimonies, she sends many of Salem inhabitants to the gallows in the hope that her rival will be among them. Not achieving this, she takes revenge on the farmer who perishes instead of his wife, then, runs away with her uncle’s savings and, as the legend goes, ends her life as a prostitute in Boston. One can easily see that through this heroine, whom Miller created when he was almost forty years old, women are viewed with disfavor: they manipulate and betray men to achieve their aims and design. There are in The Crucible other malign forces at work, but Abigail embodies the strongest one, the worst one and yet, she escapes punishment. The exaggerated dimension of the character reveals Miller’s early negative vision of women. Miller’s treatment of several other female characters is of the same sort. Quentin, in After the Fall (Methuen, Vol II, 202), remembers that his mother (Rose) lied to him in going on a trip with his brother without his knowing and that she often betrayed his father in dreaming of Strauss, a former sweetheart of hers. In Miller’s mind, such betrayals are linked to women’s duplicity. The stage direction he uses to describe Rose “standing isolated, moving almost sensuously” (208), echoes the one he uses to describe Eve (The Creation), whose “eyes widen and body moves sinuously” while eating the apple (391). Rose, like Eve, loves the opulence her husband provides her with but when he goes bankrupt, she expels him ruthlessly. The androcentric view is continuously legitimated by the very practices that it determines. Because their dispositions are the product of the negative prejudice against the female that is instituted in the order things, women cannot but constantly confirm this prejudice (Bourdieu, 32)

Miller’s androcentric view reveals itself in the background position his female characters occupy in his plays in which, up to the mid fifties, there

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are wives but only because there are husbands, whereas there are fathers, sons, brothers, and hardly any daughters or sisters. Miller was not the first American dramatist to use this family structure, which was “a popular one for serious male writers in all genres” (Austin 47). Eugene O’Neill had used it before Miller in his autobiographical play Long Day’s Journey’s into Night, which had been written earlier but produced after Salesman, in 1957.6 Thus in No Villain, the first play of Miller’s Simon Trilogy (1935) there are the parents, the two sons, Ben and Arnold, and the daughter, Maxine; but in the second play, They too Arise (1937) “the daughter largely disappears and Helen, the girl Ben is supposed to marry, barely exists.” (Bigsby I, 14). In the third play, The Grass still Grows (1939), Helen, who is the daughter of a rich manufacturer, elopes with the company’s bookkeeper! (ibid). Such examples show that in Miller’s early plays, the female characters are either shallow or affected with the negative character features women have been accused of having since the dawn of time. Miller’s androcentric view is also blatantly exposed in his reaction on reading in an Ohio local paper in 1940 that a family in the neighborhood had been destroyed when the daughter turned the father in to the authorities on discovering he had been selling faulty machinery to the Army. (Methuen. Introduction to The Collected Plays, Vol. 1, 17).

Though the fact that a girl had moved against an erring father had stunned him, it did not incite him to make her the heroine of his play All my Sons (1947). He promptly transformed her into a son, for in his mind, the proper confrontation could only be between Father and Son. To Charlotte Canning, who wonders “why it is necessary for women to be auxiliaries to the action”, Miller answers that “his woman characters are of necessity auxiliaries to the action carried by the male characters” (72). And I ask whether such a declaration is not pure sexism. In After the Fall, Miller made use of his own family framework and members for inspiration. His father Isidore is Ike, Augusta is Rose, his brother Kermit is Dan, and he is Quentin. In the 1980 revised stage version of the play, his younger sister Joan appears for the first time as Sylvia. Sylvia, who has been at her father’s bedside in hospital for some time, leaves the stage to go and buy him something; in another version, the stage direction mentions that she has gone to organize her mother’s funeral service. This is the device used by Miller to evict her from the stage, in order to let the two brothers announce to their father the news of his wife’s

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death. It is also to expose their rivalry since they soon start arguing to decide which of the two shall have the duty to break the bad news to their father. So, any pretext seemed to have been good enough for Miller to get rid of an embarrassing female character. Whatever the justification Miller gives, the fact is that Sylvia’s eviction is tainted with sexism: when he wrote After the Fall in the 60s, his mind continued to work in the same way: the world was men’s, as it had always been, and not women’s. Sexism shows definitely through Sylvia’s exit from the stage. Daughters, however, have had a better fate than sisters in Miller’s theatre: in his last plays, they have become fully-fledged characters. Joan Miller (who became the stage actress Joan Copeland) did play in two of her brother’s plays but never a sister’s part, which seems to have never existed in his mind. This fact merits being mentioned and interpreted. The age gap that existed between Joan and Arthur can be held as an explanation: when he wrote No Villain in 1935, Joan was thirteen and she still lived in the family home, whereas he was twenty and already a student at Ann Arbor University in Michigan. There is also the fact that the 30s were a time when, unlike nowadays, children’s behavior, games and interests were clearly defined by their gender. Boys would play with soldiers and girls with dolls; the discrimination was on the side of the boys. This is shown in a rare passage of Timebends in which Miller mentions his sister. The humorous description he makes of his family, on the eve of his departure for university in 1934, shows how he perceived his twelve-year-old sister and girls in general (in this very case, Joan’s girlfriend, one Rita). As he had noticed that his sister did not share his excitement about going to university the next day, he writes Joan was probably upstairs trying on Mother’s clothes with her best friend Rita.... who was graduating into Mother’s costume jewelry, heading no doubt for the few valuable diamond trinkets that were still left. (224)

Sexism shows through in these few lines: to nineteen-year-old Arthur, it is obvious that girls lived on another planet than boys to say the least, and to say the most, they were futile, their preoccupations shallow and, as in Rita’s case, they were occasionally deceitful and dishonest. Death of a Salesman (Methuen, Vol. I) is Miller’s most famous and most sexist play but it was not regarded as such in 1949 and not even nowadays, in spite of its overt maleness, at times ridiculous to the point of implausibility. The sexism was not that which Miller observed in his own family (because of the privileged status he granted to his mother, compared with the one he granted to his father, the provider of the family opulence but an illiterate), but in his mother’s sister’s family, his aunt

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Annie, her husband Manny Newman and their two sons Buddy and Abby, who became Biff and Happy in the play. It is worth noting that Miller excluded his two girl cousins from the cast: unlike the father and the two sons, they obviously did not stir his imagination. Miller makes a sober description of them in Timebends: he writes that the elder “Isabel was a real beauty/ but / the younger, Margie, was a tender girl bedeviled by pustular acne” (122). In the play, Willy’s attitude to Linda, as well as Biff’s and Happy’s to women, were still widespread in post World War II America and were just as bad, if not worse, in European countries.7 Women’s voices were silent and when they were not, they went unheeded; as did the voices of the victims of young Biff’s rough behavior in the 30s, as did the complaints of their mothers, as was Linda’s own voice (Vol.I, 151).8 Yet, Linda was not really a voiceless spouse, she was not silent: she was silenced. She always tried to express her opinions, to have her say, but, except in purely domestic matters, including money ones, for which, due to either Willy’s inability or lack of interest, she had developed some kind of expertise, she was practically denied the right to think and speak when Father and Sons were present because, at such moments, a male bonding would begin to operate and she would become almost invisible. Willy had always taken Linda for granted, for a commodity constantly at his disposal, as is attested by her taking off his shoes whenever he came home from his salesman tours, her buttoning his jacket and bringing him his spectacles and handkerchief whenever he would go out. In this respect, the woman whom Willy regularly met in a Boston hotel in the course of his salesman’s tours is the very opposite of Linda. Her status in the play remains purposely vague: Is she a receptionist? Is she a buyer? She is simply referred to as “The Woman”. She sees the salesmen’s merchandise down the hotel hall and accepts presents from them (because most likely she has no salary and works only on commission). Though very little is said about what she looks like, she certainly looks more sexy in her black slip than Linda wearing an apron, carrying a basket of washing or mending her stockings. And she has a job “of some kind”, one at least that entitles her to choose the men she wants to go with: she tells Willy, “You didn’t make me, Willy, I picked you” (150). At being told this, Willy is at a loss (is he flattered? More likely, he is taken aback), because such words shatter his vision of women and he is no longer leading the game. The Woman’s status stands in contrast with Linda’s: the former’s is subject whereas the latter’s is object. “The Woman” is shown to have a power that is antagonistic to that of men, she threatens to disrupt the patriarchal dream of a cozy home life with the little woman (Abbotson

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145). When the play was produced on Broadway in 1949, family structures had not yet changed: they would soon because the outside world had. The marked almost ridiculous glamorization of males in their physical aspects and expected behavior is a point in Miller’s favor. Willy thanked Almighty God for making Adonises of his two sons, and sports played a very important part in Happy and Buddy’s lives, much to the detriment of their studies, because the Lomans thought that physique was a passport to success and fortune in the business world. On the evening following Biff’s return, Willy, evoking the latter’s former football glory at the Ebbets Field game, remembers that “when that team came out, he was the tallest”, and Linda confirms “Oh, yes. And in gold” and Willy adds (though he had not read the classics) “like a young god. Hercules—something like that” (171). The following morning, Linda also exclaims “I can’t get over the smell of the two boys’ shaving lotion in the house!” (173). Linda has participated in this glamorization, unaware that her own image and status suffered on account of it for such glamorization of males infers a derogatory vision of women. Nothing is said of what Linda looked like when she was young, how she was dressed, and all the more reason now she has grown old. She has never been an erotic wife or a mother either: it seems she has mothered her husband all her life, and not her sons. Very little is said of the other female characters, the Woman and the chippies that Happy and Biff meet in the restaurant, who are peripheral in the play. The Loman men are not poets, eulogists of women’s beauty and brains a fortiori: to them women are just objects. When they decide to get married, they rate women according to their domestic qualities; those they do not marry, are rated according to their sexual performances. When Biff was young, it flattered Willy to see that his son was already a womanizer. He liked to imagine that he accepted presents and even money from young girls. And Happy is still grateful to his brother to have taken him “for his first time” to big Bessy, who was “such a pig” (137). Now, still a bachelor at 32, Happy sleeps with many women as he views sexuality as a competition, as a way to assert himself, partly to compensate for the subordinate position he occupies in his work. That is why he chooses the women who are either engaged or married to men who occupy key positions in the hierarchy of the firm: he has seduced Charlotte only because she was about to marry the guy who was in line for the vicepresidency, and now he does not know how to get rid of her. The bonding between father and sons has contributed to Linda’s confinement (she never seems to go out, always seems to stay home). Woman’s confinement which proceeded from the habitus -that sum of

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habits deeply ingrained in the collective unconscious, men’s and women’sand originally aimed at Woman’s protection, is no longer justified in Linda’s case and contributes only to keep her away “from all contact with all the aspects of the real world for which she is not made because they are not made for her” (Bourdieu 62). Thus, when Willy would talk in the past of taking the boys with him on one of his salesman tours to “show them all the towns”, the fact that he specified to Biff, “You and Hap and I” (145) proves that he regarded the trip as a male affair from which Linda had to be excluded. Now Biff behaves exactly in the same way as his father: planning a dinner in town, he does not think of inviting his mother. Linda finds it perfectly normal for her to stay home mending her stockings in the kitchen, Whenever Willy and the boys went out, it had become for her so usual to stay home that it was no longer painful. As the family home has been all her life, Willy thinks that Linda has lost touch with the outside world (the new one of post-World War II America): when she risks stating that Oliver (who was Biff’s boss for a short while in the past) might remember the latter, Willy snaps at her “Remember him? What’s the matter with you, you crazy?... You don’t know the average caliber any more” (170). Willy’s rough ways of treating Linda and her way of reacting to them were plausible in the 20s and 30s when the Lomans married; they were accepted by the audiences who saw the play in 1949, and continued to be in the 60s even when the Women’s Liberation Movement appeared. They started to be questioned by feminist critics from the 70s onwards. Are Willy’s ways accepted by the ordinary reader and theatergoer of the twenty-first century who discover the play now? In this respect, one can wonder whether Linda character has not become somewhat problematic and, in certain scenes, even unlikely, which brings the problem of her status in the play as well as the status of the play itself. One can wonder whether Linda is a woman in the flesh or a constructed one, i.e. “a textual creation” (Canning 74), so necessarily overdone. Perhaps instead of saying that Miller’s female characters are “male construction of women as men would like them to be” (71), it would even be more appropriate to say now, in the twenty-first century, as some men secretly would still like women to be in western societies where women like Linda Loman have now become scarce. Nowadays, Linda appears as “a nineteenth century angel in the house” (73) and Death as an old-fashioned, dated play. Miller tries to justify Linda’s behavior when he writes that she has developed an iron repression of her exceptions to Willy’s behavior- she more than loves him, she admires him, aware of the turbulent longings within him. (Death, Preface Act I, 131)

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Linda loves Willy, but does she really admire him (one is tempted to say how can she?). Being American, she shares the same dream as his success- and the noble myth it incarnates, but how can she admire such a man? She can only pity him for not having the personal abilities to accomplish it. In fact “Linda does not admire Willy because he is a great hero but because Miller needed a character who made Willy’s potential clear” (Canning 74). Linda does not make Willy’s potential clear, because Willy is a dreamer and his potential limited, not to say hopeless. Miller needed an auxiliary to highlight his pitiful hero and Linda was the one: thanks to her, one can at least feel pity for Willy, find him pathetic, be moved by him, for the part of humanity we share with him whenever we have a failure. Without Linda, Willy would have just been one in the multitude of human beings who have been unable to achieve their dreams in life. Miller made of Willy Loman a national hero but only with the help of an auxiliary; to him, the latter could only be a woman: here is the rub, for this is a sexist vision of life. Miller also writes “Linda shares Willy’s longings but lacks the temperament to utter and follow them to their end” (131). To preserve what she considered to be the family’s happiness, Linda has not only renounced her self-esteem -by accepting to be a doormat all her life- but also the part she should have played in the education of her two sons. By allowing the dreams and fantasies to flourish in the family, she has her share of responsibility in Willy’s downfall but also in her sons’ failures. “Death of a Salesman is an absurdist play ... no ground has been gained and no insight has been achieved by the characters” (Langteau 82), since “Willy’s kind of illusory thinking has been perpetuated by his children” (83). Totally in Hap, not so much in Biff (who, perhaps, will find himself in the west), but pathetically in Linda to whom, “for all her everyday common sense, life does remain a mystery” (Bigsby I, 114). So does Willy’s death to her: though she knew that her husband had been thinking of committing suicide for some time, his death seems to come to her unaware. It leaves her completely bewildered; that is perhaps why she cannot cry on his grave. In fact, Linda was what Miller allowed her to be: a foil of Willy’s character. He was not interested in Linda’s character; he had not much to say about her. He had much, much more to say about Willy and the boys. He did not have to invent them; they came to him naturally. Linda’s character seems to have been more difficult for him to grasp, because “he conveniently erased his role as creator and instead positioned himself as a cultural translator” (Canning, 71). He simply saw Linda through the

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Loman men’s gaze, which was also his and the majority of male critics’ who have deciphered the play ever since. Death of a Salesman is a sexist play but nobody was aware of it in 1949. In it, women are housewives or whores, while men make money, play sports and drive cars.9 Whores still exist but, thank God, now women are not only housewives; they often work and even have a career. The play was not judged sexist by audiences when it was played for the first time on Broadway, and Linda was not pitied. Miller had not planned his play to be a plea for women (he very likely thought this was just the way things were, had always been and should continue to be). Now, from a feminist perspective, sixty years later, Miller’s play can be seen for what it obviously was not at first: an explosive play. As explosive, but in another vein, as Simone de Beauvoir’s book Le Second Sexe, which was published in the same year in France.10 A change is noticeable in 1955 in Miller’s theater. In a View from the Bridge, (Methuen, Vol. I), though Beatrice, Eddie Carbone’s wife, offers the same ancillary image as Linda Loman (in Act I, Beatrice appears, like Linda, holding a dish towel) yet, she is different: Beatrice is not submissive, she stands up to her husband, reproaches him overtly for his impotence and guesses his latent homosexuality at a time when such a subject was taboo. Miller raises sympathy and compassion for Beatrice from the audience (Did he for Linda? Who did pity Linda?). Young Catherine realizes she has to distance herself from her uncle by achieving her independence. This new tone is due to changes in Miller’s life: his meeting with Marilyn Monroe in Hollywood in 1951, his divorce four years later from his wife, Mary Slattery, and his ensuing marriage to the star the following year. The Misfits (Methuen, Vol. II) was published in 1957, one year after Miller married Marilyn. Up to then on the screen she had been a sex symbol, in life a sexual object to be disposed of. In The Misfits, Miller made her a free, liberated woman –the first of his woman characters to be so— who casts off her ropes by bringing her Italian-American husband to Reno to divorce him. Then Miller placed Roslyn, his hyper-estrogenic heroine, in the middle of the hyper-masculine world of the West, that of cowboys and, in the 50s, of the new hippies who celebrate the death of old-fashioned values but preserve some old ones: physical strength and violence, the emblems of maleness and Man’s domination over Woman. Guido Racanelli, the first of the three men Roslyn meets, is an ItalianAmerican, but one who remains deep down a genuine Mediterranean macho. Outwardly bashful, not prone to express his feelings, he is intense inwardly and self-serving. In the past, he has been a possessive husband

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who now evokes his young wife, dead in childbirth because of his neglect. Moved at first by his loneliness, Roslyn quickly sees right through his hereditary, cultural, incurable machismo. She feels closer to Perce, the youngest man: on hearing Gay Langland, the third misfit, offering him to come and capture the mustangs, she notices Perce’s reluctance to accept the offer and is grateful to him when he says “I don’t like to see the way they grind women up out here” (78). Gay, who is the oldest of the three (he is 49), is cool and relaxed: “Homeless, he is always home inside his shoes and jeans and shirt, and interested” (13). Unlike Guido, he tells Roslyn that she is uncommonly attractive. He is not sexist; he is at ease with women. He enjoys their beauty, their company, their being different, while remaining pleased to be a man. The Misfits is a construct of traditional gender roles, an illustration of the binary opposition between the sexes. Thus, in the rodeo scene, Perce plays a gender role that tradition and culture have imposed on him but for which he is not made and does not really enjoy. The behavior of the four characters corresponds to the concepts of traditional femininity and masculinity provided by the American culture of the 50s. These gender characteristics of behavior are demolished in the course of the story. This is achieved in passages in which the description of the characters is purposely derisive, meant to remove the sacred myth of manliness from its pedestal. The removal is symbolized by a fall. As Henri Bergson analyzed in Le Rire, someone falling rarely provokes a feeling of pity among onlookers. Thus, in the rodeo episode, Young Perce, who is unable to master the restive horse, is thrown onto the ground and, dizzy from the fall, becomes for an instant the laughing stock of the spectators. Gay has a similar reaction when he comes down to approach Perce in the arena: he cannot repress a mocking tone when addressing him but, soon after, he is laughed at, when, after catching sight of his two children in the crowd, he goes in search of Roslyn to introduce them to her. Vexed, on seeing that they have gone, he climbs on the hood of a car and falls down in the middle of the people, who laugh at him. In Perce’s case, as in Gay’s, the fall is highly symbolic. It is the fall of their manliness. In the final scene of the story, which shows the capture of the wild horses, Gay is deprived of the image he had of himself and of the world of the West in which he has lived so long. It is his reluctance to let go of this double image that induces him to achieve this deadly resolution. It is only to challenge Roslyn’s reaction that he starts the sordid bargaining of the horses with Guido, but it is she who forces him, little by little, to let it go. After her fierce invective against the three men “You liars! All of you!” (118) and the one she addresses to Gay “You. With your God’s country.

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Freedom. I hate you!” (118), the latter “has a blasted look on his face as though he had been beaten in a fistfight in a cause he only half believed” (119). Under Roslyn’s influence, Gay realizes that his inborn cult of strength and manliness (the old myth of the West) is stupid and outmoded. The pathetic sight he gives of himself, now abandoned in the desert by Perce and Roslyn who have gone to free the horses, is the repetition, in a crueler vein, of the sight Perce gave of himself previously, in the middle of the laughing rodeo crowd. His failure to catch back a horse, which has just been freed by Perce, recalls his impotence towards his children to whom, being recently divorced, he has become a stranger. Yet, to spare his selfesteem severely tried by Roslyn, he manages to capture another horse, fighting like hell and mastering it, but finally undoing “his own false victory by releasing the conquered stallion and relinquishing his hold on the Western myth” (Press 44). The Misfits reveals an image of Woman and the couple that Miller had never given before, a vision for which he was obviously indebted to Marilyn. Roslyn has no longer the face of the unsatisfied wife –Elizabeth Proctor’s or Beatrice Carbone’s— and her sensuality is not tinted with sin like Abigail’s. It is, on the contrary, a source of fulfillment. The relationship of the couple is no longer shown through the male partner but through both partners. The female character is no longer a mere auxiliary of the male character; she is the pivot around which the three male partners revolve. Roslyn is also Miller’s first angry woman, the one who dares to show she disagrees. Louise’s speech (Quentin’s wife) in After the Fall (Methuen, Vol. II) compared with Roslyn’s incendiary one, sounds far more authentic and moving. Unlike Roslyn, Louise has been a submissive, self-effacing wife who, at the beginning “did contribute... demanded nothing for much too long” (167) but she is the one who, finally, breaks the mould: she reproaches Quentin with failing to notice her and maintaining her to play the obscure part in their life. When she says “I am not a blur ... I am a separate person” (168) she means that sexism, though not so obvious as misogyny, is in fact to ignore a woman, and she complains pathetically: “I’m not all this uninteresting. Many people, men and women, think I am interesting” (154). The remark Mickey makes about Louise, addressing Quentin and parodying The Bible, “she is not your rib” (158), shows that he had noticed how small a place she occupied in his friend’s mind. When Louise asks Quentin “what do you need a wife for? [....] You don’t really see any women, except in some ways your mother” (155), she does not know she is echoing the very words of Elsie and Felice, two women who had crossed Quentin’s life and who had said that he “didn’t seem to

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register when a woman was present” (155). This implies that Quentin’s attitude was the same to all women. It was just the way he looked at them all, ignored them, thus being an inveterate sexist. Louise goes much further than Roslyn in her revolt because she has grown conscious of her own value and expects to be treated consequently. With Holga, his third wife, Quentin discovers a relationship that he had never experienced with women (neither with Louise nor with Maggie, the other side of Roslyn, who was neurotic), for Holga is an independent woman who has a profession that encourages her to be so. She feels no need to assert herself because, unlike Louise, she is already a successful woman who offers a love that is not possessive. Quentin had kept Louise in the shade, not obtrusively by simply paying no attention to her when she longed for some kind of recognition. Having experienced World War II at close quarters, Holga does not possess Louise’s moral certainties but she is already on the wave that will bring ashore, from the 80s onwards, a generation of female characters that will occupy centre stage in Miller’s theatre. These female characters live in various social contexts, none under a husband’s supervision. Elegy for a Lady (1984) and Clara (1986) (Methuen, Vol. III) echo the effects of the Women’s Lib on society and Miller’s own reactions to them. In Elegy, the author pictures himself as the disoriented lover of a thirty-year-old modern, sexually liberated and economically independent woman, who has been an enigma to him throughout their affair and who is now dying in hospital. In Clara, he is a distraught father who is sitting prostrated by the corpse of his beloved daughter, a social worker who, victim of her bent for generosity and marginality, has been murdered by a Puerto-Rican second offender she had endeavored to rehabilitate after becoming his lover. In I Can’t Remember Anything (1986) and The Last Yankee (Methuen, Vol. V, 1994), female characters monopolize Miller’s attention and arouse in him an unprecedented compassion. In the former play, his compassion goes to Leonora, an ageing widow suffering from solitude and memory loss. Every day she visits Leo, an old bachelor and regular misogynist, who was her husband’s right-hand man and best friend for many years. Both characters are the victims of ageism, that ostracism in which modern, western society holds the elderly. Miller is more compassionate on Leonora than on Leo, who manages his loneliness better than she does. In the latter play Miller’s compassion goes to Karen and Patricia, two women treated for depression in a mental institution. Both have been the victims of the American dream: Karen, because her husband, a revisited version of

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Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit, had too much adhered to it and Patricia because hers had totally rejected it. In writing Broken Glass (Methuen, Vol. V) Miller felt another kind of compassion for his heroine, Sylvia Gellburg, a middle-aged, Jewish woman whose legs had become suddenly paralyzed on seeing in the newspaper, on the day after the Kristallnacht, the picture of old, bearded Jews compelled to scrub the pavement of a Berlin street, under the mocking eye of passers-by. Twenty-five years earlier, she had herself been compelled, by her authoritative father, to do a thing that had, similarly, challenged her integrity: to marry Philip, a man she did not love. Sylvia recovers the use of her legs at the very moment her husband has a heart attack and the curtain comes down. Miller insisted on having the end of the play open: either Philip is dead or only unconscious. In the latter case, such an ending lets the spectator decide whether the couple will stay together or separate. This seems to suggest that to Miller what mattered most was that Sylvia was now a liberated woman. Seen in such a light, Broken Glass, from a patriarchal story at the beginning, becomes a genuine feminist one, at the end. To conclude this essay on an image of Arthur Miller as The Defender of the Cause of Women would have been redeeming, had he not written The Ride Down Mount Morgan, his most personal and intimate drama since After the Fall/... a cri de coeur as passionate and emotional as any in Death of a Salesman. (Introduction, Methuen Drama, 1991)

That play can be taken as a testament on Miller’s part; since he wrestled with it for eleven years (it premiered in London in 1991 and was produced in New York only in 1998). Theo Felt and her daughter Bessie find themselves at the bedside of their husband and father, Lyman, after he had a terrible car accident the previous night. They are soon joined by one woman, Leah, whom they have never met before. To their dismay, the three discover that they have the same family name since Lyman has been a bigamist for fifteen years. In the play, realistic scenes alternate with surrealist ones. In the former, the two wives appear as they are, in the latter, as Lyman would like them to be. In two hilarious scenes, Lyman, turned into a magician, has Theo and Leah compete on the two grounds traditionally ascribed to women: sex and cooking. In both competitions, Leah, as expected, is the winner, being twenty-five years younger and Jewish, a better cook than Theodora. The 1991 version showed Lyman weeping, after the departure of the three

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women, over the mess he had made of his life. In 1995, as The Ride was still rejected, it dawned on Miller that it might be a case of political correctness: the women, in the play, he suspected, would be seen as too much the playthings of the male protagonist. (Bigsby, II 413)

This obviously enraged him since by the time the play was staged in New York he had altered the last scene (which is now the official ending of the play). In it, Lyman dries his tears, says cheers and addresses the audience with a defiant sentence “you have found Lyman at last”, which means “this is just the way I am, this is my integrity”. Miller fiercely defended his hero’s right to be himself and argued that he loved his two wives and made them both happy. Possibly, dear Arthur Miller, but only as long as they did not know of each other’s existence, and, you also seem to forget that the world has changed: Women are no longer playthings at Man’s disposal! Miller’s female characters changed over the years, but this play seems to prove that his own, innermost vision of women did not.

Works Cited Abbotson, Susan. C W. Arthur Miller. A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2007. Austin, Gayle. Feminist Theories for Dramatic Criticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. Beauvoir, Simone de. Le Deuxième Sexe (1949). Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Eds. Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. The Second Sex. London: Random House, 2011. Bergson, Henri. Le Rire. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1947. Bigsby, Christopher. I. Arthur Miller, A Critical Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. —. II. Arthur Miller 1962-2005. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2011. Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination, translated by Richard Rice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Canning, Charlotte. “Is this a Play about Women?: A Feminist Reading of Death of a Salesman”. In Ed. Steven R. Centola. The Achievement of Arthur Miller. Dallas: Contemporary Research Press, 1995. (69-76). Langteau, Paula. “Miller’s Salesman: An Early Vision of Absurdist Theatre”. In Ed. Steven R. Centola. The Achievement of Arthur Miller. Dallas: Contemporary Research Press, 1995. (77-84). Lash, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism. A Life of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.

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Miller, Arthur. The Simon Trilogy. No Villain (1935), They too Arise (1937), The Grass still Grows (1939). Typescript. The Theater Collection. NewYork Public Library. —. Timebends, a Life. New York: Grove Press, 1987. —. The Collected Plays. Volumes I to VI. London: Methuen, 2009. —. The Misfits. Collected Plays, Volume II. New York: Viking, 1981. Milton, John, Paradise Lost, book IV. London: Macmillan, 1953. Press, David P. “Arthur Miller’s The Misfits: The Western Gunned Down”, Studies in the Humanities (8). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1980): 41-44. Valente, Joseph. “Rehearsing the Witch Trials: Gender Injustice in The Crucible”. New Formations (32), 1997: 120-134. Arthur Miller, The Crucible. Middlesex: Penguin, 1981.

CHAPTER TEN STORYTELLING AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE SELECTED DRAMAS OF AUGUST WILSON AND DAVID RABE AHMET BESE ATATURK UNIVERSITY

Storytelling has been used for various reasons and variety of purposes of the authors in contemporary drama. Choosing to tell a story is its own kind of event for the playwrights who resort their characters to talk instead of handling the action. In this form of narrative the speaker has the advantages of separation and self-evasion. Storytelling saves the speaker from being a teller to being deliverer. A character takes centre stage as dominant speaker among other characters and delivers his/her story (either biographical or related to past, artistry, spirituality, etc.) controls the narrative time, and territorial space of the narrative. Employing stories as stage narrative, the authors can have a fictional space outside stage time and stage space, and the authors can make fact a fiction or vice versa in order to destroy the illusion of ‘real life’. Thus, storytelling is not only for the sake of presenting subjectivity, but also for hiding thoughts, motives and feelings, at times. In such cases, the speaker is referring to third person either because of the inability to face the addressee, or the events prevent the speaker from saying ‘I’. Both Wilson and Rabe let his major characters perform stories in their plays. Rabe’s story-tellers, under examination in this study are, the title character in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Billy and Cokes in Streamers, and Wilson’s typical story-tellers, Toledo in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Troy Maxson in Fences. Wilson relates the rich oral tradition of African-American culture through storytelling. He also uses stories “as key strategies in developing his characters, themes, and the social dynamics of character interaction in particular scenes” (Blumenthal 76). Wilson uses storytelling in all his plays, thus, the stories told in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences are

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most representative ones to illustrate his messages. Moreover, Ma Rainey is Wilson’s first Broadway success, and the most representative of his earlier plays; Fences is the bridge between his earlier and later plays. Without question the dual success of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences garnered Wilson a prominent place in American theatre and, just as important, bolstered his confidence as a serious playwright. (Shannon, 1995: 116)

August Wilson tries to stress in Ma Rainey, as in all of his plays, the problems of race, class, cultural identity and rage related to music, history, and spiritual world. And all these important points are delivered through storytelling rather than direct (dialogic) communication. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom takes place in Chicago, yet the stories are still filled with the echoes of the South. The play centers on Ma Rainey, a famous blues singer, and her band which consists of four black musicians, Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag, and Levee. Each character in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has a “solo turn to talk about past experiences, which echoes another ancient African strategy of expression-storytelling” (Pereira 34). The storytelling starts at the very beginning of the play when the band musicians tell each other stories related to spirituality [i.e. Toledo’s story about the meaning of Lord’s Prayer (21-2), and Slow Drag’s story about how Eliza Cotter of Tuscaloosa sold her soul to the devil but suffered no fatal repercussions (35-6)]1 while waiting for Ma Rainey to arrive in the recording studio. The first stories delivered in the play are also mainly centered on the experiences of racism. Each member of the band in the play has in common, an experience of racism. Slow Drag’s report of a black preacher and Toledo’s comment on black people in the white world as “just a leftover from history” (46) are represented as Wilson’s political vision put at the beginning of the play. It is, however, Toledo as the only character who questions his self-image and thus, is the main story-teller in the play. Toledo tells his long story about black man, as being ‘leftover from history’ while the band eats lunch together. His addressee is the fellow musicians (Levee in essence) as well as the wider audience. Toledo: Now, I’m gonna show you how this goes … where you just a leftover from history. Everybody come from different places in Africa, right? Come from different tribes and things. Soon awhile they began to make one big stew. … Now you take and eat the stew. You take and make your history with that stew. Alright. Now it’s over. Your history’s over and you done ate the stew. … See, we’s the leftovers. (46-47)

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In his story about black men’s eating the stew and being the leftover from history,2 Toledo seems to be Wilson’s mouthpiece. Through Toledo’s speech to the band, specifically Levee as his actual audience, Wilson relates his political ideology to the wider audience. Toledo is Wilson’s mouthpiece when he also stresses the idea that the colored man should make the world better for the colored people in the play (33, 46-7). Storytelling in Wilson’s plays is the strongest mode of oral discourse in African-American culture. A character who tells stories not only reveals his subjectivity but also the historical, cultural process through which he/she is formed. Fences is a story of Troy Maxson and his family who struggle to cope with the changes in America in the late 50s. Similar to Toledo in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Troy is the main story-teller in Fences, and similarly again the stories delivered in the play involve African-Americans in the U.S. Storytelling in Fences helps reveal who Troy Maxson is, and how he is formed (subject formation). Yet, the stories are multi-functional in Fences. Troy’s stories, dominating centre stage, are also his defense against his family and his own conscience related to his wrongdoings. When Rose, his wife, warns him against drinking too much liquor, for instance, he turns into his long solitary speech on Death: Death ain’t nothing. I done seen him. … Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. … I done seen him. I done wrestled with him. … I looked up one day and Death was marching straight at me. The middle of July, 1941. … I wrestled with Death for three days and three nights and I’m standing here to tell you about it (Pause) All right. (15-17)

Troy’s “Wrestling with Death” is similar to his struggling with life itself. Wilson links the image of Death with real life references; such as the company Troy works in which he is a hard worker, yet, cannot have promotion because of his color, and Troy could not find possibility to play baseball in major leagues mainly because of his color, despite his talent. Although Death’s gradual transforming from fastball to a manageable obstacle of the brutality of white robe, and finally to the army impossible to fight with seems to be a paradox, it stems from Troy’s enactment of double duty, as the story refers both to his actual audience, and to the larger context of experiences. In such references, Troy’s target, as with Wilson, is the larger audience. The story, then, becomes a fact and fiction. It is fiction in relation to his actual addressee, his wife and his colleague Bono, yet fact for black people in American society. “The darker implications of his story, typified by irony, and paradox, are expressed, but only for an imagined, rather than an actual audience” (Blumenthal, 2000: 84).

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Troy’s second ‘fictitious’ story is with the Devil. We learn from Rose that the Devil is a white man who sells furniture for which Troy pays tendollar each month to dissolve the debt. Troy tells the story just after his older son’s, from his previous marriage, asking for ten dollars. On the surface the story is clearly directed at Lyons as actual addressee whose weekly borrowing ten dollars from Troy and never paying back has a connection. When Lyons, comes to ask for ten dollars Friday night that is also Troy’s payday, Troy turns to storytelling: I went down to see Hertzberger about some furniture. I’m working everyday and can’t get no credit. What to do? … Come a knock on the door. … devil standing there bigger than life. White fellow … got on good clothes and everything. He say “I’ll give you all the credit you want, but you got to pay the interest on it.” That was fifteen years ago. To this day … the first of the month I send my ten dollars. (19-20)

The ‘fear’ of Troy to pay ten dollars each month to the Devil might at least have double meaning; the first to the actual addressee and the second to the wider audience. Troy’s speech is also “immersed in figurative language that opens a window to his thinking and that captures his very particular emotions” (Shannon, 2003: 141). Wilson moves Troy’s language from commonplace to sublime through his use of storytelling. Troy’s communication with Death, construction of his encounter with the Devil (furniture creditor) is received with total suspension by his auditors. Death becomes a wrestling partner and Devil credits him to buy furniture, it is Troy’s skill as a narrator to tease and amuse his auditors with stories while informing and instructing them, and thus it is Wilson’s skill in converting this oral tradition on to the stage. This is seen in the instructive way Troy uses his longer stories and in the way he adapts them to the particular social situations in which he chooses to tell them. (Blumenthal 76)

Troy is Wilson’s witty story-teller who well knows how to control his emotions and hide cynicism, how to persuade his addressee about his messages, how and when to instruct his past experiences, in short, how to give his references to both the actual audience, and the imagined or wider auditors. After Troy’s imaginative first two stories in the play, further stories related to his past life have turned out to be factual. Troy delivers two stories about his past experiences, the first of which is related to his family memories and the second is about his poverty as a black man. These

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stories, similar to modern soliloquies, reveal Troy’s past life, and his pain and suffering. As a revealing character in the play, Troy not only reveals the situation of a black family in America before the radical 1960s, but also his own personal life. Troy’s first story, a long story about his childhood experiences, covers especially his relations with his father: Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. He ain’t cared nothing about no kids. A kid to him wasn’t nothing. All he wanted was for you to learn how to walk so he could start you to working. … The only thing my daddy cared about was getting them bales of cotton in to Mr. Lubin. That’s the only thing that mattered to him. Sometimes I used to wonder why he was living. (49-52)

While Troy’s talking about his father, whose sole aim for his children was to make them work, in his memories refers to the hard working past generation and gives, at least, clues about that generation; its impact is apparent on Troy in one way or another. Fences covers three generations reflected in the present time of the play through the narrative of storytelling. “As such, the play captures the stories of three generations of Maxson men and points to the interconnectedness of their lives” (Shannon, 2003: 54). Troy’s second story about economic deprivation and responsibility to support his family (Lyons and his mother) in Mobile covers his stealing and his being put in prison. I walked on down to Mobile and hitched up with some of them fellows that was heading this way. Got up here and found out … not only couldn’t you get a job … you couldn’t find no place to live. I thought I was in freedom. Shhh. Colored folks living down there on the riverbanks in whatever shelter they could find for themselves. … Messed around there and went from bad to worse. Started stealing. (53)

Troy narrates his past life, his wrestle with Death, his commerce with Devil, experiences with his father, life in Mobile, and “in doing so he addresses an interested audience made up of his family and friend Bono, an audience which habitually interacts with Troy as he performs his stories” (Blumenthal, 2000: 76). He not only delivers stories and lets his auditor, but he comments on the stories himself during and in the course of the play. Troy’s stories allow the playwright to show something of Troy’s inner landscape, a frightening, nightmare world in which duty and betrayal seem to transform into each other, to dramatize the inner struggle (subjectivity). David Rabe also makes use of stories in order to reflect the inner struggles and subjectivity of his characters. In Rabe’s Vietnam plays, the

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characters ‘tell stories,’ revive memories in order to distract themselves from the threat of war. The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel is Rabe’s first professionally successful play, winning both Obie Award and Drama Desk Award in 1971. The play is about Pavlo Hummel’s eight weeks of basic training, and his being an ironical ‘war hero’ similar to one of those in Hollywood war-movies. Adapting himself to army life, and trying to gain the approval of Sergeants and his fellow soldiers, Pavlo decides to cut off his ties with civilians and construct a new appearance in the army. Pavlo, in fact, tries to make an image for himself; he has, most probably, never achieved up to that time. He is torn in between two lives; two worlds in neither of which he is well accepted. He has decided to present himself as a tough guy both with his ‘former idealism’ in a street culture in civilian life and as a ‘hero’ and ‘military machine’ in his new situation. In order to achieve this, Pavlo is in need of impressing his fellow soldiers around him, and failure of dialogue he turns to storytelling. Telling stories becomes a relevant action in a war setting, and it seems that it is the only possible language for Pavlo Hummel. Pavlo makes up two stories about his past in order to impress his fellow soldiers (especially Kress, Parker, and Pierce), and moreover to relate himself as he supposes himself to be, and also as a defense strategy against his friends’ misbehaviors towards him. The first story is about his uncle who “killed four people in a fight in a bar in San Quentin”: Pavlo: He killed four people in a barroom brawl usin’ broken bottles and table legs and screamin’, jus’ screamin’. He was mean, man. He was rotten; and my folks been scared the same thing might happen to me; all their lives, they been scares. I got that same look in my eyes like him (18).

And the second story is more interesting in that it is about his stealing twenty three cars in two years, and his runaway from the police chasing: Pavlo: Man, sometimes I’d hit lower Manhattan, and then the next night the Bronx or Queens, and sometimes I’d even cut right on outa town. One time, in fact I went all the way to New Haven. Boy that was some night, because they almost caught me. Can you imagine that. Huh? Parker? Huh? Pierce? All the way to New Haven and cops on my tail every inch a the way, roadblocks closin’ up behind me, … (18-9)

We learn that it is Pavlo’s defense strategy to make up these stories, as he tells his fellow soldier, Pierce: “And anyway, I wasn’t lyin’; it was storytelling. They was just messin’ me a little, pickin’ on me…” (20). He expects to relate himself through the stories since there is no way of constructing meaningful dialogue with his friends. Both stories, on the

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other hand, remind us of Hollywood productions of action movies. Pavlo is shaped by the movies, and thus wants to draw a tough movie-soldier picture (as presented by Hollywood) to his fellow soldiers. The impact of the movies on Pavlo Hummel might probably stem from his admiration of war pictures and street scenes in Hollywood action movies, definitely not from his real experiences. “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel is about the difficulty of understanding the world, of finding a language that can explain it” (Bigsby, 1999: 262). The ignorance of anarchic depths of the war can obviously be attributed to the middle-class family setting in Rabe’s next play, Sticks and Bones. 3 There are some resemblances between The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and his second Vietnam play in the trilogy. If the problems of everyday life are brought to battlefield in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, on the contrary the horror of war is brought into ordinary life in Sticks and Bones. The problem is again the difficulty of finding a language that can explain the situation. The stories also refer to the broader theme of the difficulty of communication in Streamers; there is a breakdown in communication between the characters that each turns to storytelling when one wants to reveal something serious about him. Streamers is accepted to be Rabe’s ‘masterpiece,’ regarded as the most effective of the Vietnam plays. The play won New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play of 1976, Drama Desk Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1977. The set is a cadre room in which soldiers, having completed their basic training, are waiting to go to the Vietnam War. The story revolves around the interaction of soldiers in Virginia barracks. The three characters Billy, Richie and Roger share the same barrack room with frequent accompaniment of Carlyle, and with intrusions of two Sergeants, Cokes and Rooney. The intrusions of Cokes and Rooney, military men of the World War II generation who call themselves ‘Screaming Eagles,’ to the cadre room expose real voices of the war. Their horror stories of war end up with singing of ‘Beautiful Streamer.’4 Storytelling starts at the beginning and continues throughout Streamers. Every character in the play has his story, and thus they together share the main story of war. The war exists only as an awful rumor: in the first act, they out to-do one another telling stories of what they have heard about jungle warfare. (Homan, 2001: 77)

War stories start with Billy’s rumor on the Korean War. He opens the discussion about being in war where there is snow or snakes.

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Richie continues the similar rumors to Billy and Roger about Vietcong who put elephant shit in a wound in your foot, … and you crawl right into the snakes that they have tied by their tails to the ceiling in the dark … and get bitten to death. (31-2)

Billy’s story about his friend he grew up with (47-48), Richie’s story about his father (76), all refer to the theme of the difficulty of dialogue. War, on the other hand, is the cause of the inability to solve a problem with conversation. Apart from the rumors, the real jungle war stories are delivered through sergeants; Cokes and Rooney. Standing side by side, Rooney as presenter and Cokes as story teller, using strong military jargon language, climbing onto the footlocker, and with jumping, yelling, screaming-eagle sounds, and making clowning eagle gestures, both resemble performance artists, rather than sergeants in the play. Cokes tells two stories: the first one about the streamer, O’Flannig, who falls down to the ground because of his unopened parachute (39-40) is more realistic than both the rumors and the media presentations. Cokes: This guy [O’Flannagan] with his chute goin’ straight up above him in a streamer, like a tulip, only white, you know. All twisted and never gonna open. Like a big icicle sticking straight up above him. He went right by me. We met eyes sort of. He was lookin’ real puzzled. He looks right at me. Then he looks up in the air at the chute, then down at the ground (41).

And the second story is about his dropping a grenade into the enemy’s hole which reflects the horror of war: Cokes: But the one I remember is this little guy in his spider hole, which is a hole in the ground with a lid over it. And he shot me in the ass as I was runnin’ by, but the bullet hit me so hard- it knocked me into this ditch where he couldn’t see me. I got behind him. Crowlin’. And I dropped a grenade into his hole, Then sat on the lid, him bounchin’ and yellin’ under me. I could hear him. Feel him. I just sat there. (41-2)

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In short, war is full of stories as Rabe observes and explains within such war stories of fact and fiction. Failure of dialogue, Rabe’s main characters in Vietnam trilogy reveal themselves by referring to storytelling. Both Wilson and Rabe create “historical moments” between fact and fiction by means of stories in their dramas. The stories in Rabe’s Vietnam plays are points of reference in that they constitute the threat of death, and drama, yet, the “pressure which fractures character, exposes the fissures in experience, reveals the inadequacy of language” (Bigsby, 2004: 266). The stories give Wilson as a playwright, a possibility to reveal emotional side (subjectivity) of his characters on one side and to instruct the audience about the social and cultural situation of African-American community, on the other. Wilson constructs black subjectivity through foregrounding of African-American culture and history in the stories, and the main messages in Wilson’s plays are explicated through the use of stories. The ‘historical moment’ comes out through both playwrights’ imagined reality which is beyond merely to inform by recording history, toward the emotional landscape of American and African-American experiences.

Works Cited Bigsby, C. W. E. Contemporary American Playwrights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bigsby, C, W, E. Modern American Drama, 1945-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Blumenthal, Anna S. “More Stories than the Devil Got Sinners: Troy’s Stories in August Wilson’s Fences” American Drama, 9 (2000):74-95. Hanlon, John J. “‘Niggers got a Right to be Dissatisfied’: Postmodernism, Race, and Class in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Modern Drama 45 (2002):95-122. Hertzbach, Janet S. “The Plays of David Rabe: A World of Streamers,” Essays on Contemporary American Drama, Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim (Eds.), Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1981. Homan, Richard L. “American Playwrights in the 1970s: Rabe and Shepard,” Critical Quarterly, 24 (2001):73-82. Mohr, Ulrich. “The ‘Reality’ of War: Rabe’s and Shepard’s Vietnam Dramas,” Sixties Revisited: Culture, Society Politics, v. 90, Munich: American Studies Series, 2001. Pereira, Kim. August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

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Rabe, David. The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, in The Vietnam Plays, Vol. One, New York: Grove Press, 1993. — Streamers, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Shannon, Sandra G. The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson, Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, 1995. Shannon, Sandra G. August Wilson’s Fences, Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 2003. Wilson, August. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, in August Wilson Three Plays, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. — Fences, London and New York: Samuel French Inc., 1986.

CHAPTER ELEVEN CANCER ON THE AMERICAN POPULAR STAGE: PLAYING TO A SOLD-OUT HOUSE VIRGINIA DAKARI ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI

The American stage, apart from a fertile ground for artistic expression, is also a marketplace where dramatic pieces are consumed on the spot. But how palatable or profitable a play dealing with cancer could be? This discussion is framed and informed by opposing views such as Susan Sontag’s claim against the aestheticization of cancer, and Barbara Ehrenreich’s cultural evidence of a lucrative “cancer marketplace.” The two-fold aim of this essay is to examine the representability and marketability of a romanticized aesthetic of disease, or in Lisa Diedrich’s words, the “arts of being ill or doing illness” (25), as these are tackled in two popular American theatrical works: Margaret Edson’s Wit and Susan Miller’s My Left Breast. Moving along the line of health feminism in the United States —from the Health and Movement of the 1970s and 1980s to the emergence of breast cancer as “an illness event” in the 1990s and the fetishization of the once taboo disease by the media stretching well into the twenty-first century— these plays register cultural, social and political tendencies around cancer, thus sharing a claim for making the most painful experiences enjoyable to the audience—the Freudian paradox of tragedy.

(Un)romantic maladies: A brief history Scene Six. Gorgeous clouds, tinted with sunlight. Eva, robed in white, is discovered on the back of a milk-white dove, with expanded wings, as if just soaring upward. Her hands are extended in benediction over St. Clare and Uncle Tom, who are kneeling and gazing up to her. Expressive music. Slow curtain (Uncle Tom’s Cabin 693).

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This perennially celebrated curtain fall, which gave rise to a long tradition of a typically American melodramatic imagination, was meant to become a staple of the country’s popular theatre, surviving well into the twentieth century. George Aiken’s dramatization of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), not only proved equally capable of shaping public opinion against slavery on the eve of the American Civil War, but also sentimentalized illness, and tuberculosis in particular, through Eva’s deeply symbolic deathbed scene, “arguably the most emotionally and historically influential of its day” (Vrettos 101). In nineteenth-century popular imagination, tuberculosis was thought to be connected not only to religious spirituality, as in Eva’s corporeal internalization of the slaves’ suffering, but also to excessive eroticism, and artistic passion. Susan Sontag, exploring late-eighteenth and nineteenthcentury attitudes toward tuberculosis and cancer, observed that the Romantics moralized death in a new way: with the TB death, which dissolved the gross body, etherealized the personality, expanded consciousness. (20)

Even after the 1880s, when it was discovered that TB was in fact a bacterial infection, glamorization of disease to the point of being a manifestation of artistic predisposition and capacity for self-transcendence proved too deeply ingrained to abandon, an example of which being the sensitive young artist’s disease in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (Sontag 35). While pre-modern culture entertained the idea of tuberculosis as “a decorative, often lyrical death” (20), Sontag stressed the impossibility of adding a romantic nuance to cancer, which, she observed, remained “a rare and still scandalous subject for poetry” (20). Arguing for cancer not being good material for romance, Sontag called attention to the fact that a cancer-stricken body evades sexualization whatsoever, as the disease attacks parts of the body that not only are embarrassing to acknowledge (like colon, bladder, rectum) but also that their visual and functional intactness is indispensable to society’s idea of normative beauty and sexuality (like the female breasts and reproductive organs). On these terms, therefore, it seemed to her “unimaginable to aestheticize the disease” (20). Placing her argument within late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury socio-cultural, historical and scientific context, she thus traced the emergence of the modern subject and the human condition, as it would be reflected in the literary imagination of the time. She observed that, unlike tuberculosis,

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cancer is generally thought an inappropriate disease for a romantic character… perhaps because unromantic depression has supplanted the romantic notion of melancholy. (51)

Of this modern plight, cancer and insanity were thought to be the most meticulous manifestation. Insanity maintained the passionate extremes, paroxysmic enlightenment, and self-transcendence that had so far been attributed to tuberculosis. The repression of all the above along with the shameful, unromantic agonies of the flesh and lack of vitality were left to cancer (36-37). To Sontag, herself struggling with the disease, cancer along with all its corporeal grotesqueness and existential dread would always be a relentless reminder of our being perishable. The plays discussed here, however, either invest —either explicitly or obliquely— on the erotic dimensions of the flesh and the self, be they excessive, deviant, or non-existent, as well as the prospect of a happy ending, be it a restored life, or afterlife. This handling of pleasure and suffering, it appears, has secured their long runs across the country’s most popular stages and their continuous critical success.

Cancer goes to Broadway: Margaret Edson’s Wit During the first half of the twentieth century, as cancer was considered far too offensive to be explicitly discussed, let alone staged, plays dealing with the disease were barely produced. 1 In the years to follow cancer would still remain a hardly representable topic, enveloped in silence on both social and artistic grounds.2 It was the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s and 1980s that sufficiently paved the way to a gradual disengaging of cancer from its taboo quality, as we shall see in more detail in the discussion of Susan Miller’s performance (Diedrich 37). That was a time when the political leaked into the personal and vice versa, foregrounding the presence of body, the female one in particular, as both material and discursive (DeShazer 56). As Judith Butler notes, “[t]he body is a historical situation… a manner of doing, dramatizing, and reproducing a historical situation,” thus calling attention to the body’s theatricality as it affects and is affected by the world it inhabits (qtd. in Deshazer, 56). Although Wit was conceived within this socio-historical context, its universe seems to be a flip side version of nineteenth-century domestic novels that idolized the cult of true womanhood and emphasized separate spheres for men and women.3 Wit appears to ask: what would happen if a woman rejected motherhood, domesticity and female bonding, and instead pursued a childless, lonely way to academic accomplishment, like Vivian

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Bearing, professor of seventeenth-century literature does? By analogy, such an assumption would lead us to trust Vivian’s concession in the beginning that what we are going to witness is nothing close to a romantic story “cast in the mythic-heroic-pastoral mode; …the facts, most notably stage-four ovarian cancer, conspire against that” (Wit 2). However, even as posing such a dilemma, Edson points a finger to all these “madwomen” like Vivian who committed the tragic flaw of living like men. Even as this genre represents “a monumental effort to reorganize culture from the woman’s point of view in the nineteenth century,” as Jane Tompkins sustains (503), in Edson’s time this model of “proper” womanhood, as we shall see, sounds at least retrogressive and dangerous. Margaret Edson’s Wit first opened in an Off-Broadway theater in New York in 1998, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1999, and was made into an HBO film in 2001. It is about Vivian Bearing, a noted scholar of seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry with specialization on John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, who is diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. Wit chronicles the struggle of a woman’s intellect to rationalize and discipline the grotesqueness of illness and the deconstructing pain that issues from it. Self-exiled within the walls of academia, she only finds pleasure in Donne’s perplexing ruminations, as well as in a selfsatisfactory display of her wit. Cancer has now forced her into isolation within a dystopic, irrational biomedical domain with its inhumane principles of healing. The play opens with Vivian in a hospital gown addressing the audience directly with a casual “Hi. How are you today?” and giving away the plot: “I think I die in the end… They’ve given me less than two hours” (Wit 2). Vivian, and Edson behind her, forecloses any sentimental overtone whatsoever, saying that: “The Faerie Queene this is not” (2). Several flashbacks present her pre-cancer glory as a precocious toddler, an enthused graduate student, and a formidable professor in class who delights in degrading her students. The play suggests that she has placed so much emphasis on her intellect that her neglected female body is now avenging her. What can be inferred early on, therefore, is that Wit extensively draws on alienating meta-theatrical devices, in order to squarely state its departure from any kind of pure appeal to emotions and identification. It taps on the spectator’s wit, so to speak, to bring up issues such as the stereotyped commodification of the female patient by biomedicine, issues of subjectivity and agency, mind-body dualism, and the importance of simple human kindness over perplexing intellectual rigor. Vivian holds to her claim against sentimentality in the first half of the play, where she displays her intellectual superiority, her wry humor and

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wit to fight her own afflicted flesh, and the dehumanizing medical authority. But as the plot evolves and cancer progressively takes hold of her, Vivian seems to become embodied to her suffering, thus downplaying both her character’s emotional detachment and the play’s tactics of postmodern alienation. Attesting to this shift, DeShazer draws the parallels between typical romance fiction of the eighties—descending from nineteenth-century domestic novels—and what she labels as cancer romance (138). This genre bears certain characteristics that differentiate it from what is widely identified as popular romance but in essence pertains to the same goals and target groups. Also being a descendant of nineteenth-century romance fiction, it maintains several features of the old genre. Gender roles and the separate spheres women and men occupy are clearly promoted here as well. But instead of a conventional love story that develops between a woman and a man, popular cancer fiction privileges idealized love between a dying woman and the female supporters who surround her bedside. Rarely do husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, or male friends provide primary care to women dying of cancer. The thematic and structural economies of the play invest on character clichés, such as the repressed female academic, the cold doctor, the caring nurse, and the old and wise woman mentor (Vanhoutte 393), as well as the traditional rising action (discovery-denial) and denouement (acceptance-redemption) of melodrama. Romance precisely springs from the use of pathos and tragicality to “evoke an emotional catharsis that emerges from the perspective that love conquers all, outliving even death” (DeShazer 170). The sentimentalization of plot and disclosure of the play’s romantic trajectories becomes evident in the scene wherein Vivian undergoes a pelvic exam conducted by Jason, a young oncology fellow and former undergraduate student of hers. Passionately dedicated to research, erudition and knowledge, Jason reminds her of her younger self at the beginning of her academic career. Only that now her body is the text under examination. Jason treats her the way she treated Donne’s lines, and her students, forcing both of them into submission to her mastery. The spectacle of a powerful woman exposed, her legs in stirrups, humiliated by a once vulnerable young man that is now eagerly feeling the tumor inside her to assuage his thirst for knowledge while recalling the way she used to treat him in class has faintly pornographic overtones, Vanhoutte observes (401). Yet again, she seems to be punished for living like a man: cynicism, erudition, and intellect, instead of compassion, motherhood, and emotion. Although pornography is probably not Edson’s intention, Vanhoutte explains, it nevertheless reveals how deeply influenced she is by the prevailing blame-the-victim stereotypes about cancer as a disease/punishment of the

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self (Sontag 40, 44). Vivian, who is obliquely accused of neglecting her emotional intelligence and suppressing her sexuality, is now being punished with a grotesque pregnancy, and a humiliating penetration; Vivian, who used to intellectually humiliate her students, is now being physically degraded by one of them. The impression that cancer strikes as a just retribution pertains not only to the economy of tragedy but also to the typical chastising of the hysteric woman of nineteenth-century literature. Further probing into this scene as pornographic spectacle, it becomes clear that affinities are indeed striking. Linking Vivian’s suffering to “a kind of medicalized and gynecological pornography,” Pamela Cooper draws parallels between Edson’s fascination with pain and British painter Francis Bacon’s aesthetics of suffering (26). She argues that for both Bacon and Edson, the violent spectacle brings, along with abjection and horror, “voyeuristic excitement and a strong shiver of arousal” (25). This interpretation does not contradict Sontag’s view of cancer as desexualizing (Sontag 13). In fact, it calls attention to a perverse sensuality of the abject body as a staple of all horror literature, art, and cinema, that has always made spectators shut their eyes and still peek through slightly parted fingers. Unlike the insensitive male doctors who have turned Vivian’s body into the object of their scrutiny, Susie, the nurse, counteracts this sterilized, medical sadism of theirs with compassion. Despite her carefree manners and casual addresses being frowned upon by the stern professor, Susie supports Vivian through moments of excruciating pain. Not only does she share popsicles with her patient, but she is in fact the only person who frankly discusses with Vivian the option not to be medically resuscitated in case her heart stops; “doctors always… want to know more,” Susie explains (Wit 68). For the first time in the play, Vivian favors simplicity over “the claims of ‘research’” by choosing not to be resuscitated (Vanhoutte 403). This speech of hers is a telling moment of transformation: That was certainly a maudlin display. Popsicles? “Sweetheart”? I can’t believe my life has become so… corny. But it can’t be helped… Now is not the time for verbal swordplay ... for metaphysical conceit, for wit. ... Now is the time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. ... I want to hide. I just want to curl up in a little ball. (She dives under the covers. Scene change. Vivian wakes in horrible pain. She is tense, agitated, fearful. Slowly she calms down and addresses the audience. Trying extremely hard.) I want to tell you how it feels, to use my words. It’s as if… I can’t… There aren’t… Say it Vivian. It hurts like hell. It

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really does (Susie enters. Vivian writhing in pain.) Oh, God. Oh, God. (Wit 69-70).

As cancer is increasingly robbing Vivian of her verbal dexterity, she completely relinquishes control to Susie’s unpretentious kindness. Not only does this transformation signal the proximity of death, but it also foregrounds a strong potential for redemption, as the ending is to reveal. During Vivian’s final hours, another woman appears to show her affection. It is Professor Evelyn Ashford, Vivian’s former dissertation advisor and later colleague, herself a renowned scholar and greatgrandmother of a five-year-old boy. Next to this woman, who seems to balance both intellectual and emotional growth, Vivian’s obsessive onesidedness strikes as even more disproportionate and wrong. It is then that Vivian curls like a child into her arms and denounces Donne while Ashford is reading The Runaway Bunny, a child’s story, to her, which nevertheless carries a powerful allegory of God and the salvation of the soul: “No matter where the soul hides,” Ashford says, “God will find it.” She then kisses her goodbye reciting a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “It’s time to go. And flights of angels sing thee to thy nest” (Wit 53). Even though both scholars have dedicated their lives to studying the complexity of Donne’s metaphysical queries, in the end they seem to value Shakespeare’s sentimentality more than intellectualism, according to Vanhoutte: “[B]y engaging emotions instead, Shakespeare shows the way to a more spiritual illumination” (404). Vivian thus distrusts her cynicism and witty discourse as a resistance to the sweeping force of cancer, and lets herself be instead infantilized. Though a little too late, a circle of female supporters, the nurse and the scholar, envelops the woman/infant, and though they cannot heal her physical ailments, they do heal her emotional numbness by means of their love and compassion. Following a clearly romantic trajectory, the world order is about to be restored. In the economy of Aristotelian tragedy, the flaw is acknowledged and transformation is completed. Wit’s solid surface of suffering, weakened by repeated blows of sentiment, is now falling apart, exposing the play’s emotional essence, in the final scene: Vivian eventually dies despite Jason’s unprofessional efforts to save his piece of “research.” She, then, gets out of bed, sheds her hospital gown, and appears “naked and beautiful, reaching for the light” (Wit 56). One cannot help being struck by the moralizing image of Little Eva, the child/cherub, finding her proper place in heaven after her death. To seal this awakening into grace, Vivian’s inner beauty is likewise restored and visually glorified. Suffering and death are therefore sublimated into spiritual illumination, while Edson’s preoccupation with

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oversimplified binaries burdens the play with a didacticism that almost becomes clichéd and neatly rules out any attempt for deeper probing into its conceptual ingredients, be they pragmatic, metaphysical, or political. For all its facile sentimentality and religiosity, the ending seems to make the play’s inner darkness more palatable for the audience. As Cooper argues, favoring glamour, and obliquely converting the difficulties of connection into an image of accessible beauty, Wit blots out suffering with sentiment. (32)

The recovery of an idealized, pure, feminine beauty, which in essence is a romantic trope, “returns the audience to a representational comfort zone,” Cooper concludes (32). Examining Wit’s epistemological background, Elizabeth Klaver turns to dualist and materialist taxonomies and construes the play’s ending as the problematic coexistence of the two. The mind versus body dilemma argues for the materiality of the body versus the immateriality of the mind/soul. In light of this interpretation, Wit’s final scene of spiritual transcendence celebrates the superiority of the mind/soul, as opposed to the expendable body that is left behind. This reading points toward the immortality of the soul and its transference to an elevated state of existence after it is disengaged from the flesh, as sustained by religious philosophy. The materialist interpretation, on the other hand, crystallized in Western medicine tenets, posits mind as nothing but the activity of the brain’s neurons, which gives us only “the impression of a mind-body split” (Klaver 663). If there really is no split, then what we are left with is pure matter, which essentially is a postmodern principle—the cancellation of spirituality, or, the death of God. The two alternatives the audience is faced with in the end, therefore, could be summed up in this way: either the mind outlives the body and heads for the light, or the brain’s chemical reactions lead the mind to hallucinate before it dies away with the rest of the body. Indeed, the play has, essentially, provided two conclusions: “one for the dualist and one for the materialist” (Klaver 678, 675). Whatever one chooses is consistent with the play’s economy of plot and theme—the ethical questions raised, though, are still looming unresolved. Having every confidence in our being culturally predisposed to embrace the dualist interpretation, the play does provide some comfort in the end. Klaver states in agreement that “it would be terribly depressing if it did not offer some shred of hope,” which “postpones catastrophe” and helps spectators avoid direct confrontation with death (679).

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What is highly dubious though, is Wit’s structural and stylistic consistency. Let us for a minute assume that Vivian did not reveal her restored beautiful body on its way to another ethereal state of existence, but stood up instead, still wearing her hospital gown and pushing her IV pole, and asked the audience all over again: “Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. Just great” and so on. What if an exhausted Vivian/performer repeated her part, as if eternally trapped in an ontological/representational impasse, paralleled to a Dantean hell, a Sisyphean predicament, or a purgatorial anguish? If that were the case, the play would then expose its essentially claustrophobic, circular structure; it would convey an alarming sense of the deconstruction of the subject and reckon with an unfathomable loss. Her witty mind then would be engulfed by the body, “all too woefully” so (Sontag 19), in a Baconian mise-en-abyme—to borrow Cooper’s parallelism: the glorification of aesthetically, ontologically, and symbolically expendable flesh. Most probably, though, this version of the play would have never made it to Broadway as it did in January 2012. Vivian would be played by Cynthia Nixon, former Sex and the City star, lesbian mom, and cancer survivor, as it had been widely publicized; Lynne Meadow, who directed the play, has also had a bout with cancer herself. This well-timed affinity among character, actor, and director was applauded by the audience, as expected (Haun). Not only did Nixon shave her head to be more convincing as terminally ill, but smoothed the hard edges of both Vivian’s intellectual sternness and cancer’s truly ugly side, critics noted.4 Despite the rave reviews this production garnered, there are other more skeptical ones that peered through the “sentimental haze” of the cathartic release: “The only way to get so dark a play to Broadway nowadays is to hire a big name,” Terry Teachout remarked, “and it seems more than likely that this revival… would never have opened there, had Cynthia Nixon not agreed to be the star.” It seems therefore that what this production sold was not the story of a woman painfully dying of cancer and emotional isolation, but Nixon’s. In the bottom line, Vivian, and the average spectator, were taught a lesson on how to be a better person, for, “no one ever dies meaninglessly on the popular American stage,” Lloyd Rose concluded in his review. Attempting an evaluation of the play’s reception—especially that of the latest Broadway revival—despite its dark subject, the ingredients of the success it met with boil down to the following: its reliance on traditional narrative forms ranging from Aristotelian tragedy and medieval morality plays to Shakespearean romance and Victorian melodrama, its manipulation of the politics of spectatorship through fascination with the

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grotesque, as well as its ambivalent critique of America’s most mistrusted institutions, the medical establishment and the academy, simultaneously rejecting and asserting their authority. 5 These aspects of its success, however, only succeed in calling attention to its drawbacks: The victim is blamed for her illness, reverberating Sontag’s critique against casting cancer as a disease of the self; modern medical practices are attacked as even more destructive than the disease alone; intelligence and kindness are regarded as mutually exclusive (Vanhoutte 406); and rigid gender pigeonholing is once more perpetuated, declaring any transgression as contemptible, punitive, and potentially hazardous to one’s health. The play, then, sends spectators home with a comforting prayer and a last peek at a beautiful, sufficiently famous, naked woman, in all its tabloid titillation.

Cancer at “a theatre near you:” Susan Miller’s My Left Breast Wit’s admittedly overt sentimentality as the chief factor of its positive reception from critics and audiences is only partly true. Its Broadway revival came at a moment in history when cancer had long been established as the “topic of our times” (Miller 319). The emergence of Women’s Health Movement in the 1970s led to the founding of the National Breast Cancer Coalition in the early 1990s, which succeeded in drawing media attention to cancer and sought to help women be informed and involved in decision making about their treatment. As a result, an increased corporate interest in sponsoring cancer research emerged. The founding of breast cancer coalitions dedicated to the memories of women who lost the battle with the disease (i.e. the prestigious Susan G. Komen Foundation) brought breast cancer under the spotlight. The cultural appeal of this increased corporate interest can be gauged in the emergence of countless popular autobiographical narratives, TV series, hospital dramas, websites, chat rooms, magazines, as well as pink-ribbon-themed products in the service of fund raising initiatives—it comes as no surprise that cosmetics and jewelry are the industries that are most involved in cancer awareness and support campaigns. 6 This immense publicity and marketability, epitomized by the thriving “pink-ribbon” industry (Ehrenreich), has contributed in educating audiences sufficiently about the “dread disease” or “c word” of earlier times. This out-of-the-closet boom of the nineties was not only related to cancer and AIDS, as it were, but spelled out another set of taboo words, “gay” and “lesbian.” David Roman and Holly Hughes reflect on the

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emergence of queer solo autobiographical performance as a boom orchestrated within the communities of queer artists and writers and with clearly set goals: to sustain the formation of a distinctly queer identity; to stand for the rights of diversified groups within the larger mainstream culture; and to assist the dissemination of their work. Susan Miller has claimed her space within this community with her autobiographical solo performance My Left Breast, which first premiered at the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival in 1994 with Miller playing herself. A series of successful productions with Miller as well as other actresses performing the role of Susan followed across the United States but also Canada, France, and the United Kingdom until recently. Susan has gone through mastectomy and is now a breast cancer survivor. From the outset, she takes on to subvert the play’s dark topic employing humor and surprise. She thus comes out dancing, asks the audience to guess which of her breasts is fake, shows them her prosthesis, and talks about the most important moments in her life: a miscarriage and the ensuing frustration; a new child, her son, and his coming of age; being in love with and abandoned by a woman; and cancer of course. This is how she introduces herself to the audience: I’m a one-breasted, menopausal, bisexual, lesbian Mom and I am the topic of our times. I am the hot issue. I am the cover of Newsweek, the editorial in the paper. I am a best seller. And I am coming soon to a theatre near you (MLB 319).

In the above display of a most effective dramatic economy, Susan puts on show her twofold agenda: spelling out the “C word” and the “L word,” and subverting the cultural disavowal of “deviant cells and deviant desires” (Stacey 78). On the one hand, she consciously establishes herself as a multifarious, transgressive spectacle of a woman that clearly departs from mainstream principles of femininity, celebrating the def(v)iance Vivian was punished for in Wit. On the other hand, she contextualizes her performance within the breast-cancer obsession of the nineties, preceded by the AIDS horror of the eighties, “when we all lost our innocence” (MLB 318), and concomitant with the queer boom that was bound to revolutionize not merely a private sense of lesbian and gay identity but essentially its cultural manifestation and representation through the media and popular culture.7 Susan goes on to reveal how cancer and the ensuing mastectomy have changed her life as a lesbian woman and her ability to love and be loved by other women. To this end, she attempts to remap her scar into her

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bodily geography, relocate her sexuality around and within it, and embody it into her post-operative self: “I miss it but it’s not a hand,” she says. I miss it but it’s not my mind. I miss it but it’s not the roof over my head… I miss it but it’s not a conversation with my son… I miss it but it’s not HER” (MLB 314).

“HER” apparently refers to Susan’s ex-lover Franny, whom she intensely recalls “with [her] mouth sucking a phantom flutter from [Susan’s] viny scar” (314). In this renewed map of her body, the scar is the ground zero where her gender identity, her body consciousness and her sexuality converge. By acknowledging the expendable nature of a missing breast, therefore, not only does she deal with its loss more effectively (DeShazer 64), but she also seizes the opportunity to explore the erotic potential of this territory. Susan once more turns from the personal to the political implications of her scar, as she attacks long-held taboos relating cancer with sexual deviance. First, she seeks to subvert vilifying stereotypes regarding the “cancer-prone personality.” Miller obviously echoes Sontag’s critique when she says that There are those who insist that certain types of people get cancer. So I wonder, are there certain types of people who get raped and tortured? Are there certain types who die young? Are there certain types of Bosnians, Somalians, Jews? Are there certain types of gay men? (319)

Declaring her opposition to the common belief of the time that demonized homosexuality by relating it to horrific diseases like AIDS and breast or ovarian cancer, she reminds society of the fact that “lesbians are women. Women get AIDS” along with cancer, thus disturbing the illusion of “healthy” and “diseased” sexual practices (MLB 317). For this reason, Susan redirects spectators’ attention from such misleading stereotypes to a profoundly lacking medical and social establishment: “I miss [my breast],” says she, “but maybe I wouldn’t have to if anyone paid attention to women’s health care” (317). Taking her argument on subversion of stereotypes a notch up, Susan scandalously blends lesbian lovemaking and the aphrodisiac effect of the prospect of death in her explicit account of intimate moments with her lover: The day after I came home from the hospital, still bandaged, ... Jane and I made love. I didn’t care if my stitches came free. Let them rip .... The

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possibility of death nearly broke our bed. In a few days I would start chemo, but that night I was not in possession of the facts. I was a body in disrepair and someone was healing me. ... “My love.” “Don’t stop.” “Darling” (MLB 336).

Although sexualizing a post-mastectomy body might initially give the promise of a strong statement against the traditional masculinistic appropriation of the female body, it still conveys an almost pornographic sensualization of the spectacle, also seen earlier in Wit’s pelvic exam scene. Within the framework of Oprah’s Show popular media culture, Mary DeShazer observes, such explicitness excites rather than calms voyeurism and, therefore, sits on the fence “between subversion and reappropriation” (Aston qtd. in Deshazer 80), making Susan hoisted in her own petard. Another point that might strike back as a little too awkward in Miller’s pornographic talk is that sexual craving obscures the severity of a postoperative condition. Is such a representation raising any awareness and inciting any action rather projecting a self-indulgent fascination with sex—be it hetero- or homosexual? The implications behind this scene would be better construed if seen under the light of the queer aesthetic, as this was formed in the context not only of the gay and lesbian movement, but in the subcultural world of queer bars, cabarets, and drag revues and in the public context of lesbian and gay people negotiating personal safety with outright defiance. (Hughes and Roman 6)

This is also the idea behind the park scene in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, where Louis, guilt-ridden for having abandoned his weakened by AIDS boyfriend Prior, is cruising for sex in New York’s Central Park. In a masochistic, self-punishing burst, he invites the stranger man with whom he has agreed into a practically unprotected sexual encounter to “keep going / infect me / I don’t care” (Kushner qtd. in Geis, 120). Although Miller’s intensions are certainly informed by her hope to subvert the stereotype of a desexualized female cancer patient, she ends up perpetuating another misleading stereotype, that of the oversexualized queer. The fact that her lesbianism appears at times to weigh more that cancer in her performance could be better illuminated, were we to place My Left Breast in the larger context of the queer solo performance boom of the nineties. Departing from mainstream theatre in many ways, being multiracial, cogendered, multisexual, democratic, and intent on “articulat[ing] some of the most pressing issues” of the time, queer solo

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performance has also been an easy target to attack on both artistic and ethical terms (Hughes and Roman 1). As Hughes and Roman observe, queer solo performance boom was almost immediately followed by a bust “caused by lessened arts funding and the encroachments of corporate entertainment on the cultural margins” (2). In 1990, as they report, the religious Right disseminated through the media the view that the NEA was bleeding the American people so that artists could show off their privates, smear themselves with chocolate, cross-dress, and splatter the audience with HIV-positive blood. (Hughes and Roman 8)

which inevitably led NEA to end all funding for individual artists. This is probably what Miller herself had in mind when she said in one of her interviews that “censorship is a complex phenomenon here in the US” further explaining that “it is never official, but, of course, we know that sponsorship is often dictated by what is perceived as ‘mainstream and marketable’” (Jackson). Miller thus employs breast cancer, “America’s darling” in Ehrenreich’s words, in order to keep the funds flooding while she is making her (queer) point. 8 Miller wrote the play 15 years after her been diagnosed with breast cancer. As she admits, in order for her to be able to play Susan, she had to distance herself from the dense emotions that overwhelmed her when she went through these moments in her life and later when she put them into a play: “See,” Miller tells us, that Susan—she isn’t me. She’s a character, which by this time many other actors have played, and although open to interpretation and modern contextual theoretical exegesis, she’s written to be who she is where she is what she is for all time. (Miller 2011)

This urgency to disengage herself from the character is very similar to Sontag’s desire to disengage herself as a patient when she wrote Illness as Metaphor. Although Miller strives to prove that she has moved forward, that cancer cannot be more significant than other life experiences, she only manages to convey the opposite: that is, a strong sense of disorientation and a considerable amount of difficulty in handling the aesthetic imprint her polymorphous identity as a lesbian, bisexual, Jewish single parent has on her art. Further fueling this sense of her dis-identification with her character, Miller rejects the autobiographical dimension of the play, admitting that “Susan” is “someone who exists somewhere in time, who is real but also a fiction.” Irrespectively of whether “the character has life beyond its

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creator” or not (Miller 2011), which, after all, is endemic to all dramatic and performance art, the case of someone who survived to tell the story is a distinct feature of autobiographical theatre. That been said, Miller does not seem to fully do justice to the autobiographical claims of her play, therefore falling short of fully embracing it as “the most immediately understood form of queer self-representation” and “part of a larger collective and ongoing process of revisionist history” (Hughes and Roman 4). Miller ends her performance with the way she opened it—in an upbeat tone: I miss it but I want to tell all the women ... that we are still beautiful, we are still powerful, we are still sexy, we are still here (I unbutton my shirt to reveal my scar as the LIGHTS FADE) (MLB 339).

These final lines seem to be robbed of the spunk that ran throughout the performance. Miller, with this choice of hers to reveal her “mark of experience” under “tasteful lights,” as Winer remarks, eventually downgrades the scar scene, which is aesthetically and thematically the most pivotal one in her performance (qtd. in Carr 124). As Miller claims in support of that decision of hers, the play is as powerful without that moment… so there is an alternative to that, in which the lights go dim as someone starts to unbutton their blouse, or they don’t even, and you can omit the line ‘I’m going to show you my scar,’ thus allowing for the play to be performed by other actresses that do not have breast cancer (Wieder). However, as one critic wrote in response, “there is a world of difference between being a cancer survivor and playing one” (Holman). Paradoxically, as Miller has repeatedly stated in interviews, she never wanted to write about cancer: It wasn’t until I found a metaphor to encompass the other things I did want to write about that I was able to attempt a play incorporating my experience of having breast cancer at 36. (2004: 74)

Her purpose was to write about all kinds of loss both straight and gay people face and the chance to mine the potential for transformation out of them, which posits breast cancer not as a dreadful disease that necessitates prevention and effective therapy, but as a makeover opportunity—echoing

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the “relentless brightsiding” of breast cancer marketplace Ehrenreich cautioned against. Departing from the shock tactics employed earlier in the play, Susan’s reassuring confirmations of beauty and sexuality in spite of the scar, perhaps even because of it, add a sentimental tinkle to suffering as if to “keep chaos at bay” before the curtain (MLB 336). What happens if someone dies before being transformed or if someone fails to see the bright side of her chance with cancer? This very popular play does away with such queries and stays focused on soothing rather than provoking spectators’ anxieties, lest “the breast-cancer cult’s obsession with survivorhood” be not sustained (Diedrich 52).

Offending or entertaining the audience? Marketplace aporias Ellen Leopold asks How is it that a subject so utterly taboo, for so long, has become so commonplace so quickly, taking up residence in every cultural medium, from soap operas to sculpture? (2)

And it might be appropriate to end this study by acknowledging that the aporetic representability of cancer raises more questions than those it answers. Do such performances essentially alter our perception of disease? Is overexposure the solution to previous silence and demonization? Does speaking it out erase the stigma? Where are “the limits of representability” drawn, “so that our national melancholia becomes tightly fitted into the frame for what can be said, what can be shown” as Judith Butler would ask? (148). What can be articulated in response, however, is one’s skepticism toward the simplistic belief that joy and happiness can come through personal transformation without a concomitant social and political transformation. (Diedrich 43)

This is a most poignant inconsistency in the plays discussed here that reminds us of the post-capitalist ideology of “compulsive happiness” of American society (Sakellaridou 357) and the predominantly escapist principles of commercial theatre that substantiate it. One cannot but admit that popular plays, as those discussed, do bring under the spotlight a persistently “closeted” issue like cancer. But trying to present it as “commonplace” entails the risk of “sanction[ing] overexposure to pain as

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yet another marketing strategy” (Leopold 215) and therefore inevitably leading us all the way back to the trappings of metaphor Sontag sought to denounce.

Works Cited Aiken, George L. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in Representative plays by American Dramatists, Vol. 2. Edited by Montrose Jonas Moses. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co, 1925. 603- 693. Brantley, Ben. “Artifice as Armor in a Duel with Death,” The New York Times, January 2012. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/theater/reviews/cynthia-nixonin-wit-at-manhattan-theater- club.html?_r=0. Butler, Judith P. Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning And Violence. London/New York: Verso, 2004. Carr, Tessa W. “Recovering Women: Autobiographical Performances of Illness Experience.” Diss. The University of Texas at Austin, 2007. Cooper, Pamela. “Violence, Pain, Pleasure: Wit.” Peering Through the Curtain: Disability, Illness, and the Extraordinary Body in Contemporary Theatre. Edited by Thomas Richard Fahy, Kimball King. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2002. 24-34. DeShazer, Mary K. Fractured Borders: Reading Women’s Cancer Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Diedrich, Lisa. Treatments: Language, Politics, and the Culture of Illness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Edson, Margaret. Wit. London: Nick Hern, 2000. Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Welcome to Cancerland.” Harper’s Magazine, November 2001. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/cancerland.htm. Farmer, Jim. “Atlantan Margaret Edson’s Play Finally Heads to Broadway.” GA Voice, January 20, 2012. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.thegavoice.com/aae/theater/4055-atlantan-margaretedsons-play-about-confronting-cancer- finally-heads-to-broadway. Geis, Deborah R. and Steven F. Kruger. Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Haun, Harry. “For Cynthia Nixon and Lynne Meadow, With Wit Comes Understanding.” Playbill.com, January 5, 2012. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.playbill.com/news/article/158242-For- CynthiaNixon-and-Lynne-Meadow-With-Wit-Comes- Understanding.

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Holman, Curt. “Theatre review: My Left Breast.” Creative Loafing Atlanta, February 7, 2007. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://clatl.com/atlanta/my-left- breast/Content?oid=1265677. Hughes, Holly D. and David Román. O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance. Edited by Holly D. Hughes and David Román New York: Grove, 1998. 1-15. Jackson, Eric. “‘My Left Breast:’ An Artistic Success, Learning Experience for Theatre Guild.” The Panama News, 9.22, November 23 - December 6, 2003. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_09/issue_22/revie w_01.html. Kerr, Stacey. “Medical Arts: A Different Kind of Healing.” Sonoma Medicine Magazine: International Medicine, 56.3, Summer 2005. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.scma.org/magazine/?vol=56&num=3. Klaver, Elizabeth. “A Mind-Body-Flesh Problem: The Case of Margaret Edson’s Wit.” Contemporary Literature XLV, 4 (2004): 659-83. Lederer, Susan E., “Dark Victory: Cancer and Popular Hollywood Film.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 81.1 (Spring 2007): 94-115. Leopold, Ellen. A Darker Ribbon: A Twentieth-Century Story of Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. Lincoln, Ivan M. “Play Relates Cancer Victim’s Journey.” Deseret News, May 31, 2002. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/916824/Play-relates-cancervictims-journey.html?pg=all. Miller, Susan. “My Left Breast.” Humana Festival ‘94. The Complete Plays. Edited by Marisa Smith. Hanover: Smith and Kraus, 1994. 31139. —. “Playing Susan.” American Theatre, 21.4 (2004): 73-75. —. “Casting Myself,” Howlround.com, April 27, 2011. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.howlround.com/casting-myself-bysusan-miller/. Murphy, Brenda. Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Prono, Luca. Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Popular Culture. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2008. Rose, Lloyd. “Wit.” Washington Post, March 3, 2000. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/wit_wpost.htm. Sakellaridou, Elizabeth. “The Right to Unpleasure as Social Critique and Creative Method: The Example of Contemporary American Theatre.” In Reconstructing Pain and Joy: Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Chryssoula Laskaratou, Anna Despotopoulou,

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and Elly Ifantidou. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. 357369. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. 1978, 1988. Penguin, 2002. Stacey, Jackie. Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer. London: Routledge, 1997. Teachout, Terry. “Into the (Spot)light.” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2012. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020457370457718475 2896051224.html. Tompkins, Jane P. “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History.” Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Edited by Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 1994. 501522. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly 18.2, Part 1 (Summer 1966):151-74. Winer, Laurie. “My Left Breast Offers Personal Look at Grief.” Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1998. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/feb/10/entertainment/ca- 17360. Wieder, Tamara. “Battle Scars: In My Left Breast, playwright Susan Miller chronicles her struggle with breast cancer.” Phoenix, April 4 - 11, 2002. Accessed November 10, 2012. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/qa/documents/0 2219270.htm. Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. “Cancer and the Common Woman in Margaret Edson’s W;t.” Comparative Drama 36, 3/4 (Fall 2002 / Winter 2003): 391-410. Vrettos, Athena. Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

CHAPTER TWELVE IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK: PERFORMING HISTORIES IN THE WORKS OF SUZAN-LORI PARKS NELSON BARRE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY

The act of telling stories memorializes the dead; the art of performing stories commemorates the living, and by doing so it creates a new history. In her essay “Possession,” Suzan-Lori Parks says I’m working theatre like an incubator to create ‘new’ historical events. I’m re-membering and staging historical events which, through their happening on stage, are ripe for inclusion in the canon of history. (Parks 4-5)

The words of a play make up only part of the vast landscape an audience comes into contact with during a performance. Parks’s incubator theatre takes full advantage of this fact and confronts its audience with much more than simply words. In her plays, words become secondary to their rhythm, just as stories become secondary to their performance. Parks actively seeks to tell versions of familiar stories that have not been told. The playwright revises, restructures, and reinvisions well-known narratives and forces them to confront dominant structures of cultural mythology. Each play is a search for truth and meaning in the world Parks has constructed; one that is not less real than anything anyone else has ever created, from history to physics—after all, even mathematicians have imaginary numbers. The playwright’s works use performed histories as the basis for creating new meaning, which the playwright separates from the white, dominant narratives of the past. This paper investigates the playwright’s storytelling and re-membering of history through an analysis of performance. More specifically this paper discusses In the Blood, Fucking A, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The America Play, and Topdog/Underdog

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within the context of contemporary feminist revisions of narrative as a form of reclamation and performance of a forgotten past. The Red Letter Plays (In the Blood and Fucking A) provide an introduction to the playwright’s literary repossession through their linkage to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s seminal text and performative reimagination. Then the plays concerning historical shaping (with Venus and Death of the Last Black Man) are discussed, where the playwright utilizes figures of a global past that have not been allowed to speak across the centuries. Finally, the analysis concludes with the Lincoln plays (The America Play and Topdog/Underdog) where Parks directly confronts the mythologies around which Americans have constructed narratives that elevate half-fulfilled promises of equality and salvation from the stains of history. Parks uses dramatic action, power structures, agency, and visual storytelling to complete the picture of her “re-membered” history and engage with audiences and their visceral reactions. Her works reconstitute stories of the past, both literary and historically based, and revise those narratives within a feminist performance framework. The beauty and poetics of Parks’s language cannot be denied; her words have an unmistakable character of their own. They bring the world to life with clear and distinct purpose. Her use of “Rep&Rev” calls on models of jazz aesthetics, allowing her storytelling to take on a new timbre and nuance with every line. In her essay “Elements of Style” Parks illuminates what she means by “Rep&Rev” when she says Through its use I’m working to create a dramatic text that departs from the traditional linear narrative style… it’s not just repetition but repetition with revision. And in drama change, revision, is the thing. Characters refigure their words and through a refiguring of language show us that they are experiencing their situation anew. (Parks “Elements of Style” 9)

The notion of truth takes on a new form because of this distinct feature in her writing. The worlds created by the language in her plays embody this sense of change, shifting moralities, lives coming undone, and the newly stitched fabric of history. While the words may offer a voice to these explosive traits within her work, the old adage “Actions speak louder than words” cannot be stressed enough in regards to Suzan-Lori Parks. She chooses theatre as her medium which lends itself to a living, breathing history that may not only be retold night after night through performance but also in the varying interpretations of her physicalized world. It is through action and performance that she provides the visual stimulus that grants insight to the audience.

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In the Blood chronicles the story of Hester La Negrita, a mother of five bastard children (each from a different father), as she attempts to navigate a harsh world where she believes that she can make it, if she could only “get a leg up” but fails because of her overwhelming circumstances. This play, from beginning to end, is filled with striking and difficult images that completely transcend the written word of the script. One of the most intricate and immediate uses of these images is Parks’s instructions about casting. Five adult actors play each of Hester’s five children, as well as the five societal influences in Hester’s world (for example: Jabber, the eldest also plays Chili, his father; and Beauty also plays Amiga Gringa, Hester’s white friend). Each aspect of social control against Hester is physically and actively represented. Reverend D., the Welfare Lady, the Doctor, Amiga Gringa (White Friend), and Chilli (as in the cold, calculating nature of masculine hegemony) all shame the black welfare mother Hester as a social, cultural, and sexual pariah (Kolin 245). These analogous characters provide a reader with plenty to ponder when considering the play; a viewer, however, has the opportunity to experience the visceral connections between the children and their adult incarnations. It’s more than just making associations between the names. The welfare system, the medical community, the religious sector, patriarchal structure, and white society are all made manifest onstage for the audience to see and feel. As Hester starves herself to provide for her children, her love builds, but so does her disdain for her progeny, as they literally become the reason for her inability to succeed in life. This view becomes even further complicated by the end, when she despairs over their births but finds it impossible not to love them with every part of her being. She defies her expected reaction, saying instead that she “shoulda had a hundredthousand” children to love, showering herself in her own murdered son’s blood (Parks 107). Hester goes to jail for the difficulties and sins thrust upon her by a “big hand coming down on her”, all under the scrutiny and hatred of the adult counter-parts (Parks 110). Parks’s striking dramatic imagery imprints itself in the minds of everyone, onstage and off, who comes across her work. As such, viewers are more likely remember the moment when Jabber tries to teach Hester the alphabet more than they remember the crushing words that dismantle the protagonist at the play’s start and finish (Jefferson). Parks specifically details the set design at the beginning of the play saying the word “SLUT” is scrawled on the wall of Hester’s home under a bridge (Parks 9). As a reader, we experience this once and perhaps remember its existence as the word is used. As an audience, you are constantly confronted by the writing on the wall. Hester, too, cannot escape this word. Even though she does

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not know its meaning, it seeps into her existence. This melding of sociocultural and physical violence exerts arguably the most control over a person within these plays, from their body to their social standing, down to their psyche. Jabber: Slut. Hester: (I said shut up, now.) Jabber: I know what it means. Hester: (And I said shut up! Shut up.) (Rest) (Rest) Jabber: Slut. Sorry. The word just popped out, a childs joke. He covers his mouth, sheepishly. They look at each other. Hester Jabber Hester Jabber Hester quickly raises her club and hits him once. Brutally. He cries out and falls down dead. His cry wakes Bully, Trouble and Beauty. They look on. Hester beats Jabbers body again and again and again… Jabber is dead and bloody… Hester stands there alone—wet with her sons blood. Grief-stricken, she cradles his body. Her hands wet with blood, she writes an “A” on the ground. (Parks 105-106)

The playwright brings every piece of the performance to a fever pitch at this moment, providing an onstage audience to supplement the one offstage, constructing a re-structured version of the Pieta, and using her “Rep&Rev” to return once again to Hester learning the alphabet. This event is seen and judged not only by Hester’s children but also by their counter-part adult characters. The audience questions which characters are viewing this savage image of filicide, unable to fill the void of silence that has accompanied the murder. As other scholars have insinuated, it is also a moment when the audience is brought into collusion with the onstage chorus, adding to their silent complicity of viewership (Elam 117; Schafer 193). The moment begins because of one word, but the silences embodied by the characters’ names without dialogue allows that space to be filled. Hester literally reads the writing on the wall for the first time, aware of its meaning and connotation, unable to escape it. This moment of savagery becomes a saving grace for her son, rather than a vicious act of hatred. Hester’s attempt to bring Jabber back through the letter “A” enacts a new recitation of history, a new creation of the written word meant to show love, where it had previously been only a cause for violence and revulsion. The words may provide the basis, but it is the actions, the injuries—

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bodily, emotional, and political—that tell the truth of the playwright’s dramaturgy. This cultural, emotional savagery laid upon all the characters in Parks’s works leaves a wasteland of internal, desolate solitude. This fact becomes visually unavoidable in Fucking A, where Hester Smith, another “Rep&Rev” version of Hester Prynne, takes center stage not as an adulteress but as an abortionist (bearing an “A” inscribed on her breast from a violent branding). She represents the physical manifestation of her village’s dirty secrets and the inescapable shame from which children are so often born in Parks’s worlds. The writing on her exists as a form of bodily communication, a literal manifestation both of her vocation and her dedication to her son, Boy. Hester shows her devotion to Boy, who she has not seen for 20 years, since his imprisonment for stealing meat from a rich family. On the day the authorities took Boy, Hester cut herself and her son on the arm deep enough to leave matching scars so that she would recognize him when he is released. Hester works as an abortionist for money to pay back the debt of imprisonment, which will eventually buy her son’s freedom from prison. She performs her job, returns from her business covered in blood and with a coin in her pocket. This payment goes toward a chance to share a picnic with her imprisoned son before she can pay for his full freedom. Unfortunately, due to continued poor behavior, the cost for his freedom increases exponentially, and Boy has been given a new name—Monster He escapes and tries to steal from Hester’s house, where he unknowingly meets his mother. The Hunters pursue Monster and, rather than allowing him to be taken, Hester Smith slices her son’s neck, a mercy rather than the perpetual suffering he has undergone since childhood. The physical markers of this play shape the very fabric of Suzan-Lori Parks’s worlds. Again she engages aspects of physical violence as signs of love, as can be seen in the ending of both In the Blood and Fucking A. These restructured versions of salvation allow the playwright to tell her own version of history, the struggles of a family that works in the muck and blood for the sake of other people. Bodily inscriptions become a new type of writing—a new type of anagnorisis and catharsis gained through blood. Both Hester and her son are marked, and only when they recognize their matching scars can the sacrifice be made for the family’s tragic salvation. This moment provides the necessary recognition that leads to the release of tragic and cathartic energy, and this is made manifest in the physical makeup of the characters. The audience must constantly look at the scars and the bleeding “A” on the play’s protagonist, a physical piece of Parks’s storytelling. Likewise, when the audience or any character is first introduced to Monster, one of the first things anyone notices about

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him is that he has horrible scars on his arms. “Yr arm. Thats some birthmark” (137 and 155). The playwright has provided the key to deciphering this world’s message on the bodies of her characters. Stories and rumors about Hester and Monster circulate in town, but the actions taken by both the scarred mother and her son belie the words used to describe them as bloody, amoral criminals. They take it upon themselves to act better than their place suggests, but they are still punished for it. Verna Foster says in her essay “Nurturing and Murderous Mothers in Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood and Fucking A” that Parks shocks her audiences into confronting their own prejudices… acknowledging the appalling social injustices that produce the murderous rage or despair that causes loving mothers to kill their own children. (Foster 76)

In other words, the characters in these plays are victims of their social condition that has literally been written on their bodies, unable to be removed. The lives of these characters are under constant duress because of the influence of white patriarchy and historiography, which has dictated that these mothers must bear the marks of shame publicly so everyone will know their despicable nature. The dominant systems of law and sociopolitical structures impose themselves on the characters, displaying the circular nature of cultural injustice actively taken against these women. The literal means of storytelling, which for much of theatrical history relied on the importance of the written word and strict adherence to it as the one source of creative inspiration, must come alive in performance. Parks uses her playwriting to take the tenets of dominant theatrical practice and subjects them to re-membering in the realm of form as well as content. As the playwright says “I am an African-American woman—this is the form I take, my content predicates this form, and this form is inseparable from my content. No way could I be me otherwise” (Parks “Elements of Style” 8). The same is true for Hester Smith. The abortionist bears the inscriptions of shame from her past, and she is “a woman who does all she can” (Parks 123). She is a workingwoman, and her entire life is spent in trying to free her son. In her final moment, Hester finds that the only way to do this is to take what she is and use it to grant solemnity to an act that is essentially part of her life’s work. Hester lights a candle after each abortion, making a small shrine to those children she has removed over the years. Hester: I have a way to do it that wont hurt. (Rest)

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Give me yr knife. Sit in my lap. She sits in a chair. He hands her his knife and sits on the floor in front of her… She gently pets his head. Then, with a quick firm motion, she slits his throat like Butcher taught her. He dies. She holds him in her lap. The sound of dogs barking and Hunters voices are now deafening. Theyre right outside her door. They force their way in. They stand around looking at Hester and Monster… The Hunters leave dragging Monsters body. Hester sits there alone. She gets up, drops the knife in the wash bucket. She lights another candle. (Parks 219-220)

The only way Hester can memorialize her son is through the lighting of a single candle, as she has done for all the other children whose lives she has ended. The physical manifestation of who she is cannot be escaped, and so she cannot help but fall into the same routine, but this time is different, as she cannot simply return to work. It has taken a monumental toll on her existence, and the audience, who has been assaulted with this image of a working abortionist from start to finish, sees the savagery committed through love rather than duty. Both Hesters share this awful crux of unfaltering love for their children. It is this reinscription of love for those who commit arguably this most obscene gesture of child murder that re-members the stories of women who love too deeply and must suffer its consequences. Parks creates a new kind of sympathy through this assault on the audience’s senses and previously told narratives. In Venus, the playwright pushes the audience to reconsider their notions of historical accuracy when she reinscribes historical events with her own form and style. Parks portrays Saartje Baartman (the eponymous Venus Hottentot), an African woman famed for her large derriere, at various times as a member of a traveling freak show and an object for scientific inspection. Upon first encountering this text, a reader might simply regard the piece as a post-colonial discussion of a historical figure. Nikol Alexander-Floyd explains that non-black, non-women feminists were responsible for a new subjugation based on a fetishization of this newly enticing topic. In her article “Disappearing Acts: Reclaiming Intersectionality in the Social Sciences in a Post-Black Feminist Era,” Alexander-Floyd says “The commodification and consumption had deleterious effects on both black women academics and black women as subjects of research” (Alexander-Floyd 2). Parks takes Baartman as a subject to reinvest the nineteenth century woman’s image with a newfound sense of purpose, one that both displays the beauty of the African woman and also highlights the negative effects of white male narrative construction surrounding her history. Additionally, in performance Venus

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wrestles with conceptions of abuse, spectatorship, and performance all as commodities within the frame of post-colonialism. The Mother-Showman abuses the Venus verbally and physically, much to the delight of the spectators onstage, and the horror of those beyond the fourth wall. The performed audience onstage is meant to offer a distorted version of the audience off-stage. The onstage audience displays the problematic beliefs and tendencies of a racially disparate hierarchy, which views the Venus and the onstage actions with mixed fascination and disgust. When the Baron Docteur, the Venus’s white lover, shows her to a community of his colleagues, he blithely rambles on about her anatomical makeup as they gaze, poke, and prod, examining and cutting into her with their view as viciously as with their scalpels. She slowly deteriorates under their incisive remarks and their knives, all in the name of science and entertainment. This violence enacted upon her creates the immediacy of the world, and those viewing are implicated as much as those acting. The literal and verbal dismembering is the precursor to the play’s conclusion as the Venus Hottentot (who is announced dead at the start of the play) begins her posthumous career as a freak show figure for scientific exploration and dissection. Her former lover removes the Venus from his life piece by piece, as she becomes a reverse Frankenstein monster. The fascination created by the action from earlier in the play has transformed both audiences (onstage and off) into witnesses and creators of an abattoir. The performance undercuts itself with Parks’s “Rep&Rev” many times, creating a much more complex piece that at the same time makes it clear that the audience beyond the fourth wall is expected to look into the terrifying mirror of objectification and voyeurism. Without the atrocities seen onstage, it might be easy to remove oneself from the subject and its terrifying repercussions. Parks, however, does not readily allow the audience to do so. During the intermission, the playwright includes a scene that directly implicates the audience: The Baron Docteur presents his discoveries of the Venus Hottentot’s autopsy to the audience of scientists and colleagues who have an interest in studying her: Us. In it he notes every part of her anatomical makeup; he even says that his research has value that will go far beyond the community of those gathered to view (Parks 95). By performing this scene during intermission, Parks further complicates the relationship of the audiences to the piece. There are multiple audiences onstage at all times who are either invited to gaze or are denied viewing, but the offstage audience is always given a chance to see, that is, until the intermission. The audience is invited to leave the space and read the findings later, but that also somewhat breaks the contract of the performance. They are expected to perform their role as

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audience members by listening and watching, but the Baron Docteur assures them several times during his monologue that people can relieve themselves as needed. There is indeed a need to remove oneself from these visual atrocities, but to detach is also seen as a sort of rudeness to the performer as well as the history of horror that is meant to garner our attentions and sympathies for two hours time. It is as if by leaving, violence is done by the audience to the play. Even as the figure onstage assures us that we do not do it a disservice, he notes that what he says has importance and speaks to a global perspective. Parks’ complication of audience-spectator relations returns time and again throughout the play as onstage spectators delight in the Venus and her fascinating anatomy. Interspersed throughout the play are scenes from For Love of the Venus, a stage-play within Venus that is performed with the story that a man falls in love with an African woman, much to the chagrin of his family, only to find out that she dressed as the Venus Hottentot as a test to see if his view of beauty was skin deep. This play within the play brings into sharp focus the darker implications of acting on love and feelings in a world where there is inequality and the destructive use of violence by those onstage and off. The Venus has been reduced to a voice from the distant past by the end, literally ripped apart by the man she once loved, and the consolation prize comes in the form of For Love of the Venus sympathizing with the Baron Docteur and not the protagonist. The audience is shown this hypocritical view of love and beauty in the fashion of old science, which demanded bodies of interest to be dismembered for the sake of knowledge. Suzan-Lori Parks re-orders this dissection and remembers the Venus, giving her the ability to perform a new history that speaks to the importance of her existence. The works of Suzan-Lori Parks tend to focus on a sense of agency through performance. While the characters may seem to display little to no agency, it is through performance that each figure is given the ability to reconfigure the focus of storytelling. As previously shown, both Hesters and Venus were controlled through white patriarchal discourse, but Parks’s plays provoke critical analysis of these power structures. The playwright’s dramaturgy demands this action as a way of extricating African American experience from the hegemonic narratives of the past. In production, actions are repeated and revised as a way of granting clarity for a character’s thoughts turned into physicality. Hester of In the Blood writes “A” over and again, as a way of learning but also as her own condemnation. The act of slicing an animal’s neck, which Hester practices in Fucking A, must be used to save Monster from the Hunters who pursue him. And the Venus Hottentot is announced dead at the beginning of

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Venus, and yet she performs her role as a way of revising her historical legacy as an oddity of civilized society. Each of these examples displays Parks’s style of enacted re-membering. By invoking a similar action from the past, a character takes control of their destiny, even as they are reviled by society at large. The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World examines the history of black life and oppression on the broadest scale. Parks uses this play to engage the struggles of African American experience across all time and space. Black Woman with Fried Drumstick intones “Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just uh moment uhgoh in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world” (102). The repeated mantra of the play rings loud and clear, along with the bells tolling the fight for equality. The play’s fractured lyrical storytelling coupled with the clear visual cues makes this play one of Parks’s most powerfully physical embodiments of black struggles against white-made history. In “Possession,” the playwright explains Since history is a recorded or remembered event, theatre, for me is the perfect place to ‘make’ history—that is, because so much of AfricanAmerican history has been unrecorded, disremembered, washed out, one of my tasks as playwright is to… locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, hear the bones sing, write it down. (Parks 4)

Parks takes up arms against the created mythologies surrounding the African American experience with this play. She uses the performance space as a discursive event, meant to disrupt socio-political norms by visually and aurally assaulting the senses. Black Man with Watermelon dies several times throughout the play and then is revived by Black Woman with Fried Drumstick. Upon each resurrection, Black Man tries to move his hands, but it is not until the play’s ending when he is able to actually move. This is a symbol of his ability to progress and take action against the stultifying language and power structures created to keep him in his place. Black Man takes control of his own life only after he has been killed and subjected to multiple existences as the man confined to his place in life. It is through his ability to stand up time and again that we see his progression. Black Man’s support system of characters onstage represents the African American community in its attempts to raise not just one from their ranks but an entire culture. Black Woman with Fried Drumstick represents the cornerstone upon which all these other characters are built. Everything happens through her and around her, including each resurrection of Black Man. After various resuscitations, she feeds him, caresses his wrists,

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removes the noose from his neck, and provides maternal comforts each as an act of rebellion against cultural stereotypes of black experience. Yvette Louis notes in her article on the play, Against the dramatization of repeated assaults on Black Man that repeatedly defer his quest for social equality, the character Black Woman is re-presented as the discursively constructed black female body through whom the perpetually fragmented black male body is re-membered. (143)

Black Woman’s support is essential to Black Man’s journey toward life. By drawing attention in performance to the nurturing relationship among the African American community, the effects of white narratives about black experiences are relatively minimized. Instead, Parks uses the supporting characters to uphold a strong, caring community to represent the whole. The cacophony of voices read on the page may indicate this bold statement, but performance enhances the visual and aural landscape thereby making the message apparent and effective. Death of the Last Black Man truly achieves its potential when seen by an audience. While this is characteristic of other Parks pieces, this is especially true because of this play due to its fragmented structure, consciously disregarded grammar, and non-traditional character names utilized to embody the themes she undertakes. Parks foregrounds the action of the play, specifically of Black Man with Watermelon, by providing the chorus of other archetypal characters as metonymical parts of a whole experience. Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread: You will write it down because if you don’t write it down then we will come along and tell the future that we did not exist. You will write it down and you will carve it out of rock… Black Man with Watermelon: Miss me. Black Woman with Fried Drumstick: Miss me. Black Man with Watermelon: Re-member me. Black Woman with Fried Drumstick: Re-member me… Thuh black man he move. He move. He hans. (130-31)

Figures such as Queen-then-Pharaoh Hatshepsut or her son Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread lament their lack of dynasty in a world based on constructed memory and importance. Similar to Hester’s need to mark Monster as a form of recognition and his fulfillment of negative societal expectations, Queen-then-Pharaoh Hatshepsut marked her son in the traditional fashion of claiming him as her own by birthright. But he has erased his mother’s marks and wishes to re-member history

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through a new style of inscription—writing. She demands recognition for what has happened in the past; her son represents a physical embodiment of her own place in the world and the perpetuation of her family and personal history. Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread advocates written memorialization of black life by black people in a world that has been almost exclusively run by white men, while the titular Black Man is the only one able to take the first step in actively claiming his history. Physicalized (re)creation of history becomes the only way in which figures in the play can communicate. And Bigger And Bigger And Bigger calls out for help in freeing himself from straps that keep him from moving his hands, the embodiment of taking control of one’s destiny that the eponymous Black Man must enact. In the Final Chorus of the play (as quoted above), Parks provides the action and storytelling that creates identity and history. Again, fashioning a world of history re-membered and revised through physical embodiment and enacted past that must be brought back into focus so it is not forgotten. These living monikers of history-making represent acts of agency taken by the characters, and the playwright by association toward crafting and re-membering a new historicity for the African American experience. The figures in the play must undertake the active re-creation of their place in the world. The characters simultaneously enact their own identity by appropriating it through action. When Black Man moves his hands, the play comes to an end. This is the most striking moment of the play, as up until this point the eponymous black man has been unable to take control of his place in the world. He must beg the help of Black Woman with Fried Drumstick and those who will come after. The cycle of storytelling and creating history has become manifest in the body of the actor onstage. The physical performance of carving history into a rock or moving one’s hands represents a dynamic identity free of the bonds of the past and yet inherently linked to it. By adding flesh to the words and spoken histories, Parks foregrounds the discursive act of black social movement. The performance of movement becomes a form of agency by which Black Man is able not only to live but also to construct his own narrative. Where Death of the Last Black Man presents a new type of story bent on re-membering of the dominant, constructed narratives concerning African American experience, The America Play aims at uncovering and recovering the past from the Great Hole of History. Re-membering Parks’s version of the past is of the utmost importance in this play because of its dual-nature as an African American play, and a play about the nation of America. Before an audience even encounters the play, they are confronted with the question of what it means to be an ‘America’ play.

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Once the performance begins, the newly constructed version of history becomes more discursive as the historical figure of Abraham Lincoln is performed by a black man. The Foundling Father: There was once a man who was told that he bore a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. He was tall and thinly built just like the Great Man… the Lesser Known had several beards which he carried around in a box. The beards were his although he himself had not grown them on his face but since he’d secretly bought the hairs from his barber and arranged their beard shapes and since the procurement and upkeep of his beards took so much work he figured that the beards were completely his. Were authentic as he was, so to speak. (159-60)

The literary and metaphorical significance of this choice by Parks cannot be understated. The “authenticity” of the Foundling Father’s appearance, actions, and demeanor become the focus as the play begins. The Foundling Father, a black man dressed as Lincoln, performs the last act of America’s sixteenth president—watching a play. This passive action only partially embodies what Parks aims to achieve with the play, and it is important to note the symbolic connections to history, theatre, and the African American experience. Parks literally engages her desire to ‘dig up’ the bones of the past and listen to them with The America Play. The connection of African-American experience to the foundation of the country becomes something that is unearthed and discovered as the play is enacted. The Foundling Father takes part in a performance of Lincoln’s assassination, wherein visitors to his venue pay for the chance to act the part of John Wilkes Booth, his murderer. He not only recognizes his place as an actor, but he takes the time to make this evident to the audience. This violent act represents the Foundling Father’s attempt at capitalism in a white-run society. He must be killed by white spectators over and over as a symbol of this model from which he cannot escape, but he considers himself a success because people come take part. The Foundling Father has invested all his money and skills into creating this attraction, but even so it does not seem very lucrative. While he embodies the American ideals of business and historical gravitas, the Lincoln impersonator can only imitate what has been dominated by other culturally dominant models (i.e. hegemonic narratives). Parks creates a multi-layered vision of American history where the past must be uncovered only to be largely misunderstood or ignored. The playwright constructs a world where the African American community literally becomes the scapegoat upon which years of frustration, aggression, and violence for the sake of entertainment are heaped. Parks complicates the historical figure of the man who brought

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emancipation to the slaves in America by presenting him as an imposter, a man who looks the part and can act the part but is essentially a fake. In addition, his name is the Foundling Father; a play on the fact that this man is the founder of a nation, the man upon whose back America was built, but he is a waif. On the other hand, the name simultaneously signifies the foundling child, as both immature and unwanted—a waif of the American public opinion due to his color. These ideas permeate the performance space, as an audience must encounter both a pedestal upon which the Foundling Father sits for his tourist attraction and also a great hole. Beyond the first act, the Great Hole of History becomes the focal point for the Foundling Father’s wife Lucy and his son Brazil. Similar to the Foundling Father, Lucy and Brazil’s existence as diggers in the Great Hole of History provides symbolic importance to the act of unearthing the past. Unfortunately, these diggers are neither rewarded nor encouraged to perform this task. In fact, the diggers are not even in the real Great Hole of History, they have made an exact replica of the Hole. In it, they find tshashkes and other items they might use as memorabilia in this tourist trap (which is a fitting moniker for this literal hole in the ground onstage). Yet, it is through these knickknacks that Lucy and Brazil not only reconstruct their own family history, but that of the nation. In an attempt to re-member and recover the body and past of the Foundling Father, Lucy and Brazil attempt to recreate their ancestors. Parks provides them with a seemingly mindless and minor task of digging in a replica of a hole, in the middle of nowhere, with hardly any outsiders. Yet, the need to uncover the past remains an insatiable urge for both Lucy and Brazil. Lucy says “I need tuh know thuh real thing from thuh echo. Thuh truth from thuh hearsay” (175). She may not know the entire history yet, but through digging she will find it. Once she hears it, she can confirm or deny its existence. Unfortunately for Lucy, she is partially deaf and uses an ear trumpet, further complicating this notion that Lucy might be able to receive and thereby construct her own narrative effectively. Brazil does most of the digging and finding of items from the past. This act adds another layer of interpretation when Brazil immortalizes each piece he uncovers within the Hall of Wonders, which is meant to attract visitors searching for history. The performed act of digging is in itself a re-membering of the Foundling Father, an act of memorializing and proving significance through the tourist attraction and also with legacy. Brazil: My Daddy was uh Digger. Shes watcha call uh Confidence. I did thuh weepin and thuh moanin… Diggin was his livelihood but fakin was his callin. Ssonly natural heud come out here and combine thuh 2… This

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Hole here—this large one—sshis biggest venture to date. So says hearsay. (179)

Brazil notes the performativity inherent in his own daily performance, his digging and uncovering the past. He is constantly aware not only of his inheritance as the son of a digger (and a ‘faker’) but also the fact that he must perform this history because it is something that must be constructed. Brazil’s statement reveals the fact that everything we know about history is a fake. That is, it is performed and prime for the taking. In performance, Brazil discovers that he can use what he digs up to make a living, and to construct his own identity, finding meaning in each item he discovers. He recognizes that he performs “thuh weepin and thuh moanin” as part of the re-membered history of his father and of the country (Parks 176). By uncovering the past, the characters craft the ‘truth’ of their history. The past no longer serves as a distant story to be spoken about but rather something to grasp and put into action. As Brazil digs and finds various items in the hole, he and his mother craft their own memories which change based on what they uncover—a selective re-membering. Lucy says Cant stop diggin till you dig up something. You dig that something up you brush that something off you give that something uh designated place. (176)

The play implicates not only that America’s own history is a discovery of long-forgotten tshashkes presented in a “Hall of Wonders” but also that the entire narrative is constructed by people who have forgotten their own past. Brazil’s revelation when he finds each item provides a new piece of the familial and national history, as well as a capitalist urge to sell this history to tourists. The replica produces items of historical value that are just as concrete as the real thing. Parks upsets the dominant cultural narrative that there is only one history and that is the one that was written by the white men in power. As noted earlier, Parks writes to unearth the stories of African-American past, which needs to be uncovered and remembered in a ‘Hall of Wonders’ (America Play 174). By presenting us with two diggers and a new vision of one of America’s great icons, Parks unsettles the ways in which audiences consume storytelling in the performative realm. Performed assassinations provide an outlet for creativity just as much as an assembly of items found in a hole can create money, meaning and history. By disrupting the linear, well-made structure of plays, Parks shows that narratives no longer simply have one meaning in performance. Parks herself has noted

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Meaning refuses single interpretations in Parks’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Topdog/Underdog as well. Instead of digging for the past, the eponymous characters enact their roles as top-dog and underdog, but the definitions of each word are thrown into sharp contrast throughout as each sibling vies for dominance in the household. From the story of Cain and Abel to the myths of Yoruba brother deities (as can be seen in Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, just one example), every culture knows sibling rivalry and the desire for superiority within a family structure. The squalid room shared by the brothers in the play provides the basis for some of the central conflicts in the play: ownership and inheritance of the familial and the cultural. The physical space is charged with meaning just as the performance of each character is. In fact, it is evident from the very beginning that appearance is crucial in this world. The physicalized realm of performance and portrayal are the linchpins on which the audience judges the play for who and what these characters are versus what they say they are. While reading the play, this may simply become part of the backdrop, another detail filed away in the mind. But Ben Brantley’s review of the 2002 Broadway production highlights the performative aspect of the script, noting that it is “all about poses and pretenses, large and small, that somehow take you closer to the truth” (Brantley). The truth is in the doing onstage, not in the telling. For example, the stage directions indicate that Booth’s 3-card monte con appears awkward, but in performance the audience sees Lincoln’s superiority. This fact becomes evident the very moment the play begins when we see Booth inexpertly running the scam, and it sets the tone for the interactions between the siblings. Booth talks a big game, but his inability to compete with his brother dominates the performance. The brothers must perform every day, for each other and for the world. Topdog/Underdog uses the myth of Lincoln to deconstruct the image of benevolence and emancipation, not just among the historical period but in the contemporary realm as well. Parks’s work simultaneously considers both past and present in performance. The commentary confronts the audience early in this play when Lincoln appears for the first time onstage in his costume, complete with white face make-up. The humiliation of a reverse minstrel show attire used for the simulated assassination of Lincoln reminds the audience that this is not a world where race has been forgotten. To add insult to injury, Lincoln’s job includes caring for the costume, for which he is scolded if he damages it. Lincoln must not only

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provide a “realistic” experience for the pretend assassins, but he must also actively care for his own form of bondage. Lincoln actively tries to deny his own acceptance of his place in the world when he says It dont make me. Worn suit coat, not even worn by the fool that Im supposed to be playing, but making fools out of all those folks who come crowding in for they chance to play at something great. (28)

The performed posturing and acting big is not uncommon among siblings, as anyone with a sibling could tell you, especially when each so desperately seeks the approval and attention of the other. When Booth goes on about his girl, he is the man, almost of mythological grandeur as he struts around the room showing off for his brother in his new (stolen) clothes. This type of act they put on for each other shows the basis of their relationship, one rooted in performing for each other and lying about the way they exist in the world. The creation of a façade becomes the norm rather than an isolated incident. Cultural critic Octavio Paz explains the need to lie to oneself and others by creation of an alternate self: Every moment he must remake, re-create, modify the personage he is playing, until at last the moment arrives when reality and appearance, the lie and the truth, are one. (Paz 40)

Performed identities become real if they are repeated enough. This fact reveals Parks’s subversive commentary concerning the character of African American men according to the dominant structure of constructed language and society. A rehearsed and performed identity becomes real if you are told (or tell yourself) enough times that you fit into the mold. This is the case for both Booth and Lincoln, brothers who have built their lives on facades. Near the middle of the play Lincoln must rehearse his death due to the introduction of a robot that can be used in his place in the arcade. The dehumanizing factor of implementing a machine is coupled with the utterly humanizing experience of death. Lincoln’s rehearsal of death only improves after Booth offers advice, much like a director. Booth yells at Lincoln Hold yr head or something, where I shotcha. Good. And look at me! I am the assassin! I am Booth!! Come on man this is life and death! Go all out! (50)

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After that rehearsal, Booth has to back off saying that Lincoln’s death looked “too real” (51). Upon seeing a person pretending to get shot, it should be unsettling if it passes from a performance to reality. And the same goes for an audience, yet they know in viewing this (just as Booth does) that it is fake. It is a performance, yet something in it becomes too real and therefore terrifying. This speaks to culture at large, indicating that when a performed act becomes too real, it should be avoided. Yet, it has been noted that “Man… is not in history: he is history” and therefore this performance of a fictitious history is an attempted act of control (Paz 25). Pretend is the norm, and it is preferred due to the participants’ knowledge that it is an act. Through daily actions and performances, people remember their own selves and histories. This assuages any fears that something could go horribly wrong. In performance, the audience witnesses these constructed realities, which can only be assumed in reading the text. This is the truth of performance that Parks’s work engenders and demands. Similar to Lincoln’s predicament, Booth has one task in mind, to learn to hustle three-card monte. He foresees this glamorous world of big bankrolls and women, everything working out exactly as he plans it. The whole process is described as a scam, a performance meant to draw in the unsuspecting mark. Booth rehearses several times throughout the play, but the telling sign at the beginning is when Parks describes his actions as “for the most part, studied and awkward” (5). Time and again, Booth tries to tempt his brother into returning to the hustle, only to be denied. When Lincoln finally concedes, the rehearsals that Booth has shown are nothing compared to the “deft, dangerous, electric” moves of Lincoln (106). He is so good that he plays his brother and scams him out of his inheritance money. Every time Booth was able to guess the cards, it was because Lincoln let him. Lincoln says near the end of the play You thought you was finally happening, didnt you? You thought yr ship had come in or some shit, huh? Thought you was uh Player. But I played you, bro. (106)

This says more about the cultural norms of performance than about the inherent cultural ramifications. What we learn from Lincoln’s statement is that performance is normal, and if you believe someone is being real with you, then you are getting played. Parks uses the performance-withinperformance to comment on society and how we view each other and tell our own stories to one another, even if they are lies. The metatheatrical narrative Parks constructs with Booth and Lincoln provides a basis for the entire argument of performance within her plays. The playwright consciously

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foregrounds the performativity of actions within her plays as metaphorical and full of symbolic meaning. In this way, the playwright breaks down our expectations and re-assembles them for her own purpose: pushing readers and viewers to reconsider dominant narratives and values. Her discursive storytelling becomes the truth that the audience ingests because the performance expands from the words on the page. Without the bold style of performance that accompanies Suzan-Lori Parks’s work, the text might feel jumbled and less startling. In performance the author’s work holds nothing back and assaults political and social stereotypes through visual and aural storytelling. In the Red Letter Plays, both Hesters come from the well-spring of The Scarlet Letter, but unlike Hawthorne’s version, Parks’s take on Hester exposes not only the hypocrisy of the zeitgeist in which they live but also the one from which the audience views the play. In Venus, the protagonist re-lives her rise and fall from fame in the performance as a way to ritualize and memorialize her place in history. The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World restructures African-American history in its entirety, using performance and the movement of one man as a metonymy for an entire culture. Then, in the Lincoln plays, Parks utilizes the historical figure of Abraham Lincoln to subvert socio-political norms concerning race, storytelling, and consumerism. It is these re-membered and performed histories that construct the necessity of these plays in the theater. The stories demand to be played with the utmost truth so that no part is forgotten. Every aspect of the performance insists upon its existence, from the violent cutting of body parts to the writing of a single letter in blood. These stories are written in the veins of the figures who appear on the stage and those who would view their stories, thereby making them real. The words on the page offer a version of the truth that performance provides in vivid detail.

Works Cited Alexander-Floyd, Nikol G. “Disappearing Acts: Reclaiming Intersectionality in the Social Sciences in a Post-Black Feminist Era.” Feminist Formations 24.1 (2012): 1-25. Project MUSE. Brantley, Ben. “THEATRE REVIEW: Not to Worry Mr. Lincoln, It’s Just a Con Game.” New York Times 8 Apr. 2002: E1. Carlson, Marla. Performing Bodies in Pain: Medieval and Post-modern Martyrs, Mystics, and Artists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

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Elam, H. J., & Krasner, D. (Eds.). African-American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Foster, Verna A. “Nurturing and Murderous Mothers in Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood and Fucking A.” American Drama Winter 16.1 (2007): 75-89. Garrett, Shawn-Marie. “The Possession of Suzan-Lori Parks.” American Theater Oct. 17.8 (2000): 22-26, 132-134. Geis, Deborah R. Suzan-Lori Parks. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008. Jefferson, Margo. “THEATRE REVIEW; ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ Alive and Bitter in the Inner City.” New York Times 23 Nov. 1999. Kolin, Philip C. “Parks’s ‘In the Blood.’” Explicator 64.4 (Summer 2006): 245-248. Louis, Yvette. “Body Language: The Black Female Body and the Word in Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.” Recovering the Black Female Body: Self-representations by African American Women. By Michael Bennett and Vanessa D. Dickerson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. 14164. Parks, Suzan-Lori. The America Play, and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. —. “Elements of Style.” The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. 6-18. —. “An Equation for Black People Onstage.” The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. 19-22. —. “Possession.” The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. 3-5. —. The Red Letter Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001. —. Topdog/Underdog. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001. —. Venus. New York, NY: Dramatists Play Service, 1995. Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove, 1985. Rayner, Alice, and Harry J. Elam, Jr. “Unfinished Business: Reconfiguring History in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.” Theatre Journal Dec. 46.4 (1994): 447-61. Saal, Ilka. “The Politics of Mimicry: The Minor Theater of Suzan-Lori Parks.” South Atlantic Review Spring 70.2 (2005): 57-71. Schafer, Carol. “Staging a New Literary History: Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus, In the Blood, and Fucking A.” Comparative Drama 42.2 (2008): 181-203. .

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Wilmer, S. E. “Re-Staging the Nation: The Work of Suzan-Lori Parks.” Modern Drama Fall 43.3 (2000): 442-52.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN FREEING THE NARRATIVE: INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODS FOR EXPLORING AMERICAN IDENTITY IN LACHIUSA’S THE WILD PARTY (2006) AND KANDER AND EBB’S CURTAINS (2000) GARY M. GRANT, NANCY GRANT AND DUSTYN MARTINCICH BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY

Introduction As a stylized theatre form, musical theatre develops plot and character not only through acting, but also through dance and song. One could say that the performer in musical theatre adopts the conventions of this stylized form, as he or she would put on a mask to play the characters in the highly stylized form of the commedia del’arte. The performance conventions of acting, singing and dancing in musical theatre signify the meaning of the work as essentially as the written text with its dialogue and lyrics and the musical score with its solos, duets, trios and choruses. This essay presents the comments of a stage director, a choreographer and a psychotherapist concerning the rehearsal techniques used in developing two musicals, Curtains and The Wild Party produced by Bucknell University. The goal of this rehearsal method could be described as the unmasking of the performer’s deep connections to his/her character in order to move the actors beyond stereotypes and elevate the masks of musical theatre conventions to a more authentic level. Using the stage director’s dramaturgical methods, Part I of this essay explores contrasting notions of the American Dream by showing how masks of social status and trajectories of financial success and failure

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represent theatrical entertainers in two iconic eras. The Wild Party tells the story of a group of vaudevillians partying to forget their failing careers at the end of the Jazz Age of the 1920s and Curtains shows a struggling theatre company dreaming of a Broadway run during a Boston tryout in the Post-War 1950’s. Part II of this essay focuses on the ways in which movement, including gesture, posture, and dance contribute to character development and to romanticized notions of these periods that are easily recognized through certain kinds of pedestrian movement and dance vocabulary. Part III describes how using the methods of a psychotherapist as part of the stage rehearsal process can assist in bringing out the character’s narrative as discovered by the actor in the script and as extrapolated by the actor’s imagination in improvisational responses to this narrative in relational transactions with a counselor.

Part one: The Director’s Analysis: Masks and the Development of Character Narrative Although Kander and Ebb’s Curtains and The Wild Party by Michael John Lachiusa appeared on Broadway and were nominated for Best Musical, these musicals remain relatively obscure. So, this essay begins with a synopsis of the plot narrative and a sketch of how a stage director can interpret the use of physical masks in the narrative as a sign of the development of character identity. This part of the essay will also describe the ways in which these masks act as icons for the American fascination with one type of masked character seen in both the 1950s and the 1920s. Masks are a means for signaling identity or changes in identity. The narratives of both musicals show characters displaying, disguising, or transforming identity by adopting and shedding these physical masks. Identity is used here in a functional rather than psychological sense to describe a particular kind of person, a type as posited by a particular society rather than as a unique personality. In this sense, a mask functions as one of a variety of conventional signs through which a drama signals a character’s identity or changes in identity. Donald Pollock in a 1995 article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute writes: Masks work by operating upon the particular ways in which identity or personhood is expressed in any culture. The mask works by concealing or modifying those signs of identity which conventionally display the actor, and by presenting new values that again conventionally represent the transformed person or an entirely new identity. (584)

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In a 2001 interview, Michael John LaChiusa talks about The Wild Party in these terms: “the show is all about the masks that we wear culturally and the removal of those masks over the course of the party.” (Frank, 2) Here LaChiusa describes the mask as a metaphor for roleplaying and self-revelation, but actual physical masks are also used in both musicals.

Curtains When Fred Ebb, the lyricist, died of a heart attack in 2004, he left unfinished four musicals written with his life-long collaborator, John Kander. One of these, Curtains, which garnered a Tony Award for Leading Actor in a Musical for TV star David Hyde Pierce, opened at the Hirschfield on Broadway in 2007 and ran for 511 performances. The show received mixed reviews, like Ben Brantley’s in the New York Times where he wrote: “Curtains lies on the stage like a promisingly gaudy string of firecrackers waiting in vain for that vital necessary spark to set it off” (Brantley). It’s 1959 at the Colonial Theatre in Boston when a new musical called “Robbin Hood”, a western version of the Robin Hood story, is reaching its conclusion in a song and dance number called “Wide Open Spaces.” Madame Marian, played by faded film star Jessica Cranshaw looks on as Rob Hood wins the sharp-shooting context and proposes to Miss Nancy, the schoolmarm. The cast sings the finale of the show, during which it is clear that Jessica cannot sing, dance nor act. She takes her bows and, after receiving two bouquets, collapses as the curtain falls. Later we learn that Jessica has been murdered. Why? Was her performance so terrible that the producers needed to find a way to replace her? Was it a secret affair and blackmail or, perhaps, a jealous understudy? Lt. Frank Cioffi of the Boston Police Department arrives and announces that he loved the show (except for Miss Cranshaw) and that he would be heading up the investigation into her murder. Cioffi has discovered that Cranshaw was poisoned in the last minutes of the show “Robbin Hood” and he believes that a member of the company, who is still in the building, must have murdered her. Cioffi sequesters the cast, the crew and the producers. The show’s eccentric British director, Christopher Belling, recasts the show; Cioffi falls for Nikki, a winsome understudy who also plays a minor role. They also encounter Daryl Grady, the critic who wrote a terrible review of “Robbin Hood” for the Boston Globe. The producers convince Grady to re-review the show with the new cast, but that leaves only 24 hours for Belling to restage several numbers. An

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attempted murder of Lt. Cioffi and the dancer/choreographer Bobby and another murder take place, including a grisly hanging that brings down the curtain to Act I. We watch several rehearsals, learn about a series of blackmails and experience the interpersonal backstage drama in the cast. We discover that Lt. Cioffi is a musical theatre aficionado, who performs regularly with a local community theatre. In Curtains, physical masks function as plot devices where masking and unmasking has little effect on character development but serves to create dramatic suspense in the plot narrative. The opening number of Curtains (“Wide Open Spaces”) is staged as the finale of the preview performance of the show within a show, a melodramatic musical called “Robbin Hood”. During this number, Rob Hood, played by the choreographer, Bobby Pepper, arrives to save the day and marry the girl. The masked and then unmasked Bobby, the graceful dancer/choreographer, shows the more feminine side of the male protagonist. In the revised version of the “Robbin Hood” performed as a rehearsal a few days later, the same mask is also used to neatly complete the dramatic conflict of Curtains with the unmasking of the antagonist, the critic, Daryl Grady. At the end of this rehearsal, after his attempted murder, Bobby, who is supposed to be in this rehearsal in his Rob Hood role, suddenly comes on stage with a bloody head and collapses. Everyone realizes that the masked Rob Hood standing on stage is a fake. Cioffi puts together a few clues and announces that he has solved the case. The murderer is Daryl Grady. So, Cioffi takes the mask off of Grady, who reveals that he is in love with Nikki and could not bear to see her move with the show to New York does everything he can to stop the show. Grady takes Nikki hostage, Cioffi saves her and we quickly shift to the closing number. The finale of Curtains is a reprise of “Wide Open Spaces”, now played with a new cast. Bobby’s replacement in the number is dramatically revealed when Rob Hood removes his mask and turns out to be the masculine side of the protagonist, Lt. Cioffi, who has saved the show and plans to marry Nikki and accompany her to New York for its Broadway opening.

The Wild Party In 1928, James Moncure Marsh wrote a hard-edged, rhymed mininovel called The Wild Party. This banned-in-Boston book is said to have inspired William Burroughs to become a writer in 1958. In 2000 this same book inspired two musical theatre productions. Running simultaneously in New York, The Wild Party by Andrew Lippa opened and closed Off

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Broadway and Michael John LaChiusa’s version of The Wild Party ran for only 68 performances at the Virginia Theatre. Sticking closely to Marsh’s poem and influenced by the 1994 reissue of the 1928 poem with stunning black and white illustrations by Art Spiegleman, LaChiusa’s controversial and ground-breaking musical captures the desperation of a group of vaudeville performers in 1928. LaChiusa’s The Wild Party received nominations but no Tony Awards for Best Performances by a Leading Actor, Mandy Patinkin, Actress, Toni Collette and Featured Actress, Eartha Kitt. The director, George C. Wolfe, who also wrote the book, was significantly influenced by a 1996 publication called Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920’s by Ann Douglas. Here and in Marsh’s poem, New York City is more of a character than a setting as the Big Apple continues to fascinate Americans with its dark and dangerous urban underbelly, a den of depravity, home to debauched and violent sexual predators who celebrate their vile and evil ways in fashionable orgies that take place in their bohemian enclaves. By creating an actual vaudeville as an overture to the party that Queenie and Burrs throw for their performer friends, Wolfe managed to remain true to the March poem and also made the orgy a symbol of the end of the good times for vaudeville, and in 1928, indeed, the end for the Post World War I good times for the American people. In addition, as his opening lyrics suggest, LaChiusa uses the boozing and brawling, and the urbane and debonair zeal of an all-night party in the Roaring 20’s as a representation of the search for authenticity in a theatricalized world based on successful role-playing and mask-wearing: Queenie was a blonde, And if looks could kill, She would kill twice a day, In vaudeville. (1)

In conventional musical theatre terms, The Wild Party does not use a plot narrative. Instead, the show is a series of vaudeville sketches, complete with signs announcing the next scene and these sketches segway into a party fueled by bathtub gin, cocaine and uninhibited sexual behavior. Queenie and Burrs, whose sexually abusive relationship is also disintegrating, host this party. The evening quickly devolves into an orgy that culminates in a tragedy when Burrs, jealous of Queenie’s sexual infidelity with Black, one of the guests, threatens to kill her with a revolver but in a struggle kills himself. In the opening vaudeville section of The Wild Party, masks display the performance roles that Queenie and Burrs play in their vaudeville acts.

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Queenie’s age stands still because she wears lots of makeup or as the opening number states, “a tinted mask of snow.” Her sexy repartee, “I like my jazz wild, my liquor strong and my men hard…working,” (14) and her uninhibited flirting and dancing represent her attempts to create an identity for herself that lives up to the image of this mask. Burrs’ physical mask displays his role as the tragic clown, unlucky in love, laughing on the outside while crying on the inside: “I tole Marie, I said, ‘I-lub- ya-I lub ya-I lub ya.’ She said ‘I lub ya too. An’ da iceman an’ da milkman an’ da eggman!” (5) Like Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, even unmasked, Burrs maintains the identity of his mask by serving as the lively and humorous host to the party while all the while raging within over Queenie’s behavior. Burrs and Queenie are a Beauty and The Beast protagonist/antagonist, locked in the symbiosis of a violent domestic relationship. By the end of the party, these physical masks signal a transformation in the psychological unmasking of these characters. Moving away from the signification of the physical masks used in Curtains that serves the narrative of type in the development of plot and circumstantial aspects of character, the physical masks used at the end of The Wild Party reveal the deeper, oppositional, psychological narrative of the characters; that is, the physical masks come to signify the more interior dimensions of the characters. The philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard in the 1850s aptly described how masks function as signs of transformation in the early morning final scenes of The Wild Party. Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? …Do you think that you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? …In every man there is something, which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life, which extend far beyond himself, that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all. (Unnumbered page)

When she isn’t dancing or flirting, Queenie sits at her vanity adjusting her makeup, her mask of snow. Prompted by the information that Burrs murdered his former wife with the heel of his shoe, her genuine feelings for Black and her increasing disgust at the horrors of the party (punches are thrown, a 14 year old girl is assaulted), Queenie yeans for what she calls the light. She wants to reveal herself in order to love. After sex, as he takes a handkerchief and begins wiping her face, Black asks her “Your

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face. Beautiful. I just want to see more.” (79) In the final moment of the musical, Queenie sits alone on the stage and sings with the chorus, COMPANY To lose what was and long for more, And grasp at love and breathe in hurt, And leave the night and say goodbye…. QUEENIE This is what it is to live in Light. (81-82)

She wants to reveal something authentic about herself by showing her natural face and removing her makeup, her mask of snow. As Queenie takes off her mask in her attempt to seek her authentic self, she turns her back on her past and on Burrs. At the same time, Burrs puts on his clown mask in order to access his hidden identity, his brutal rage. He is a man madly in love and if he cannot have the object of his desire, no one else can. Spouting racial epithets and in a paroxysm of sexual curses, Burrs takes his gun and stalks down his lost lover. To complete these remarks, this essay will address how masks relate to representations of American Identity in the two iconic eras represented in Curtains and The Wild Party. In this context, the concept of the iconic is used broadly as a sign that stands for an object by representing it concretely. So, the function of the masks in the narrative of these two musicals is the concrete, physical representation of aspects of the era in which they are used. The narrative of both musicals illustrates the American romance with the “outlaw,” the fascination with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Jessie James, even Jack Bauer in the TV drama 24. These outlaws represent the dramatic tension between the American Puritan value of championing fairness and playing by the rules and, at the same time, the outlaw represents an opposite value, our frontier mentality, justified by the instinct for survival, or the need to save the world, or help the helpless, the necessity of playing outside the rules. Similar to the play within a play, the musical-within-the-musical offers a way to realistically motivate the character’s launching into song and dance. This performance within the performance technique also offers the opportunity to dramatize the rehearsal to give the audience an intimate backstage view of the theatre personalities involved. In Curtains and The Wild Party, the musical within a musical subgenre also features “outlaws,” that is, troupes of theatrical performers who, by their professions as well as their lifestyles, live on the margins of conventional America. Curtains is a parodic show-within-a-show homage to the 1950s musical theatre mingled with a whodunit murder mystery. The smell of the

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grease paint, the roar of the crowd, an out-of-town musical tryout and the leading lady…murdered! True to all Kander/Ebb musicals, there’s something darkly funny, even postmodern, about the way that Curtains celebrates not just the story being told, but the nature of telling it. The mask of the outlaw in Curtains is literal. The mask of Rob Hood, as worn by the two types of male protagonists, the feminine choreographer, Bobby and the macho detective, Cioffi, signifies the Robin Hood/Lone Ranger type of character. Here, the outlaw putting on the mask serves as a sign of impending redemption, of winning the shooting contest, of saving the town. Even villain-critic Grady’s putting on the mask to disguise identity becomes a part of this outlaw narrative because the unmasking of this antagonist is a necessary part of the heroes solving the mystery, catching the bad guy. In Curtains, the conflicts are external; there is a clear sense of right and wrong action. As Lt. Cioffi in the mask of the outlaw saves the show and marries the girl, the action of unmasking this masked man serves the motif of the comedic ending of reestablishing the status quo. The unmasking offers a strong sense that the revelation of authentic identity signals the return of the outlaw to the ranks of the conventional status quo as a part of the 1950s value of group conformity. The use of masks in The Wild Party tells quite a different story. In 1928 the story of America was changing rapidly. As representative of this change, The Wild Party zeros in on a late night, in an after-the-show get together of a troupe of vaudevillians, all on the brink of losing their whole world. In 1928 the vaudeville was dying and new and polished spectacular revues appeared on the horizon. Our players in The Wild Party, with their unconventional jobs, moral standards and lifestyles are themselves the outlaws. From animal acts to sister acts, to white and black black-faced ballad singers, to flashy tap acts, downtown vaudevillians sought to sell this identity as virtuoso outsiders to the public. The raunchy vaudeville acts that open The Wild Party are themselves acts of rebellion against the status quo, with lyrics like: I’m versatile and proud of it. My gift is being dexterous. My Daddy called me devil, But I call me ambisextrous. I like it coarse and cheap. I’m the proverbial black sheep How do I survive it all, you say? (18)

Queenie and Burrs’s vaudeville masks signify the 20’s narrative of the individual in rebellion against conformity. But The Wild Party is a tragedy

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and the conflicts are internal, psychological, the protagonist and antagonist are two sides of a coin; one doesn’t exist without the other. Although Burrs’ tragic clown mask signifies his identity as a performer/outsider, his return to the mask at the end of the play signifies the underbelly of the city, the dark side of the persona, the destructive individual act. Similarly, by questioning the very concept of a mask itself, Queenie’s equally rebellious act of removing her masks sends a double-sworded message: both a warning against the dangers of excess (drink, violence and jealousy) and the importance of the authentic individual act of self revelation.

Part Two: Kicking up the Narrative: Choreographing the Story Telling a kinesthetic narrative through choreography is an exciting and essential part to the collaborative process of developing choreography for a musical theatre production. Effective choreography allows access to images in a historical context beyond script and in harmony with song. In musical theatre, movement houses memory and conveys images that take the audience on the characters’ journey through the story, through romance, tragedy, and maybe some life lessons. Choreography reveals personal and cultural history, establishes time period, and identifies aspects of American story. From the post-World War I military marches of George M Cohen to Agnes de Mille’s post-World War II wide open western dream ballets, from Jerome Robbins’ interracial mambo in a New York gym to Bob Fosse’s slinky, sexualized 1970s signature style, movement has been a leading identifier of American narrative in musicals. It identifies gender and sexuality, explores social and class status, establishes relationships, and comments on the values of a particular period. Marrying the movement to the musical score and libretto allows for exploration of subtext and provides an additional medium for actors to convey narrative and character intention. The following comments will describe the research and process of developing choreography for productions of The Wild Party and Curtains at Bucknell University. Knowing that these musicals offered examples of contemporary musicals that look at American narrative through a historical lens, the movement and physical imagery needed to identify, and even emphasize, two elements: character development and the aesthetics of the period in America that each musical represents. The goal was to create musical theatre choreography that went beyond legs kicking, wide smiles, and spectacular spatial patterns, to create challenging productions that make commentary on today’s society.

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For these productions, the choreography developed in two ways: traditional dance movement (teaching “steps” and patterns) and actordeveloped character physicality (in collaboration with the director). The former employs values of form and beauty as a collective aesthetic. Dance forms like tap, ballet, jazz, modern, ballroom—such virtuosities of technique have been celebrated from the early days of vaudeville and musical comedy, perhaps best exemplified by Ziegfeld’s leggy production numbers. The latter values personal virtuosity and innovation—movement that develops character through gesture and physicality, something that is an identifying factor, as with Al Jolson or the Nicholas Brothers. Both are essential for finding continuity in narrative structure and for participating collaboratively with the direction, music, and design. For Curtains and The Wild Party, movement was based on iconic images of the period and, in collaboration with the director and actors, worked to go beyond caricatures, and stereotypes. By doing so, the given circumstances are identified, and audiences understand more about the “who” (beyond such types as “ingénue,” “stripper,” or “detective”) and the “when” (1920s, 1950s,). The actors develop the characters beyond romanticized versions of Americans in history—the representations of 1920s Charleston-era freedom and misbehavior and the 1950s “Mad Men” contained-and-spruced-up lifestyle. To free the narrative, the actors used movement to convey intention and need, to establish the director’s CROW (character physicality, relationships, objective, where and when). In essence, the actors were encouraged to “act” the choreography, not perform dance steps. The 1920s American narrative is intertwined with images and sounds of jazz—its music, movement, and culture. The Wild Party follows a group of vaudevillians partying to forget their failing careers at the end the Jazz Age. The choreography emphasized individualism, chaos, uncertainty, and self-destruction through movement based on convergence, near-space, collapse, release, disarray, and full-body touch between characters. Party scenes included social dances, like the Charleston and the Black Bottom, organized in chaotic spatial relationships. The flailing vaudevillians all know these iconic dance forms of the era as they are the clamoring “it” crowd who, regardless of race, gender, and sexuality, merge with one another in a common need to escape a fear of loneliness. These social scenes are contrasted by individual characters “acts,” which occurred mostly downstage of the proscenium, and featured more presentational, virtuosic, and character-identifying gestures and physicalities. Observations of the character-building workshops with the director and consultations with the actors about their in-character individual counseling

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sessions with our therapist collaborators preceded setting the choreography. For example, characters like Oscar and Phil needed choreography for their flamboyant “brother” act, as well as their role as party narrators. For songs like “Uptown,” the brothers performed precise, stylized movements harkening to the sharply-dressed “brother” acts of vaudeville stage and Harlem clubs. Using elements of tap dance and athleticism incorporated aspects of Nicholas Brothers and Riff Brothers staging. This presentational display begins to break down when Oscar drifts toward Jackie, the playboy. In “Taboo” and “Gin,” their once-presentational stylings are broken, even dissonant, mirroring the breakdown of their relationship as lovers. The clarity and formality of their overly flamboyant gestures in the choreography disintegrate, and the real world of fear and destruction is unmasked. From the opening number, “Queenie Wazza Blonde,” the leading lady is put on display for the world. Her fierce sexuality is not only a part of her virtuosity as a performer, but it is a part of her nature as a woman who is watching her career disintegrate, as so many people are about to in 1929, in vaudeville and elsewhere. She is literally clinging to whatever she can, and that is evident in the choreography. Even when she is dancing the Black Bottom, a dance done without a partner, Queenie has to draw in the attention of her audience. She keeps stopping everyone to show off, and it’s when the other characters ignore her that her mask begins to slip. In her choreography and her character’s gestures, Queenie’s persona indicated that she is not part of the Ziegfeld uptown convention and aesthetic, but of the Bowery. Her attempt to climb up the ladder of fame and love is demonstrated in her physical interaction with other characters—notably in the contrast between her physicality with Black and Burrs. The audience sees her performer’s mask in the opening olio and in scenes like “Black Bottom” and “Best Friend” and watches her mask begin to disintegrate every time Burrs intrudes. As she turns away from her audience, (both the characters at the party and the audience in the theatre house) from the typical frontal, presentational vaudeville staging, she is left to figure out who she is. Her movement therefore becomes more erratic, and eventually more realistic. Each of the characters in The Wild Party had their own act that spilled over into the real time of party life. The 1920s visual aesthetic lived in the leggy, limby, and loose ensemble movement. The Africanist rhythms of jazz, hot and fast with an imbedded call and response instrumentation, inspired syncopated, percussive steps and fluid undulations of the torso and hips. Flailing, individual dances like the Black Bottom and the Charleston, and bluesy, coupled dances like the Mooche, were common on

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the vaudeville stage, in speakeasies, and rent parties. The movement expanded further as the characters drank themselves silly on bubbles and gin, escaping from any sort of daytime reality into a nighttime charade. There was a unified experience, but the movement, like the period, allowed for personal style depending on the age, class, sexuality, and reputation of the person doing the dance. As the characters descended into their own hellish choices of drink, drugs, and sex, the music became intense, almost dissonant, and the movement tests boundaries, evolving from dances of form, like the Foxtrot or Varsity Drag, to an orgy. The challenge in The Wild Party was allowing the choreography to self-destruct, as the characters do. The staging of their individual chaos was a collaborative effort between the director and the choreographer. The music, the quintessential musical theatre convention, propels the loss of traditional convention into chaos (in “Gin/Wild/Black is a Moocher”) that twists into the orgy. Freeing the narrative in this case means letting go of the choreographic façade. The specificity of character physicality set up at the start of the show was important in order to show the entire deconstruction. Although it presents a more conventional musical theatre aesthetic, the choreography for our production of Curtains still sought to fulfill the 1950s-period dance traditions and establish actor-inspired given circumstances. In a time of isolation in America, with the Cold War, brooding storms in Civil Rights, and the birth of the baby boomers, much of the visual aesthetic was clean, crisp, romantic, heterosexual, and white. The cuts of dress and suits identified norms in gender and social status and directly influenced the more isolated, polite physicality of the characters. The show-within-a-show structure especially provided that iconic visual aesthetic of golden age musicals. The choreography for scenes like “Kansasland” and “Thataway” acknowledges that aesthetic by kinesthetically quoting images created by choreographers of the golden era of musical theatre: Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Jack Cole, Marge and Gower Champion. Their choreography embodied the American myth of the time, complete with picturesque romance relying on “appropriate distance” between lovers, large tableaux harkening back to the days of Ziegfeld, and gendered movement that focuses on technical virtuosity and compositional elements of modern dance. Their focus on technical dance skills over pedestrian movement created an alternate reality, at times dream-like. In this era, dance tells a story through pantomime and music visualization, where symphonic expression borders on melodrama. Adding contemporary touches, like same-sex partnering or tongue-in-cheek kinesthetic innuendos

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(to match the lyrical sass in songs like “Thataway”), puts the show in modern audiences’ range of acceptance. Using iconic images from musical theatre history was imperative in establishing the golden era of musical theatre aesthetic visually. Marge and Gower Champion or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers inspired much of the physical score of scenes with Nikki and Cioffi. Kander and Ebb’s music and lyrics give a nod to such traditions. Their dream sequence in “Tough Act to Follow” focused on gendered call and response choreography, complete with a stair routine, tap dance, and ballroom styles. The choreography used other features of the traditional choreography of this era, such as demure feminism and masculine athleticism that masked sexuality in heroic Western tableaus of “Kansasland” and “Wide Open Spaces.” A popular choreographic spectacle, the never-fails-to-get-an-applause kick line interprets the song “Show People.” The kick line was not only summoned by the music composition, but signified a united group of people committed to their show, each other, and bringing something fabulous to an audience. The kick line, from the days of Ziegfeld, is precise and exact, where no one person stands out, and that’s what “Show People” is all about: unity. The conformity of a kick line signals a social norm of the 1950s in its lack of individuality and style. The opportunity provided by Curtains was one of utilizing choreography to create a strong sense of ensemble—to create the character of the ensemble. The task was less about using individualized gestures and physicality to establish difference, but instead using movement to establish a united entity. The large cast made it possible to easily stage tableaux that emphasized group-mentality and “proper” etiquette identifying 1950s isolationist habits. The characters stood with “appropriate distance” between one another, and touch was limited to picturesque moments of melodrama. For example, in “The Woman’s Dead,” the cast and producers of “Robbin Hood” came together as a group to explore different methods of grieving as an acting exercise, including keening and paying homage to Jessica Crenshaw’s accessory remains. As characters are killed off one by one, and the ensemble’s fear and paranoia grew, their physicality became more erratic and less united, and the spacing between individuals condensed. In “He Did It,” the cast converges in three groups, tightly packed behind the stage curtains to protect themselves from the killer. The staging of these musical numbers that happen outside the show-within-ashow signified unity and collective behavior, making any outsider, including at first Detective Cioffi and in the end the murderer Daryl Grady, stand out even more.

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Musical theatre continues to be a source of commentary on social behavior and a medium for looking at icons of American history. The music and choreography together invoke iconic images of American history. That movement creates a basis for further character development in terms of physicalizing intention, creating a character spine, and evolving signifying gestures. In our productions at Bucknell, we continue to seek a creative process where musical theatre performance does not need to separate the spaces for song, dance, and acting.

Part Three: Exploring Character Narrative by Using Counseling Interviews in the Rehearsal Process In an interdisciplinary course at Bucknell University, the Counselor Education Department and the Theatre and Dance Department collaborated to create a method of teaching counseling skills to student counselors and at the same time providing student actors an opportunity to develop their characters. In this program, student actors used photographs to develop a character and then their character attended a mock counseling session. Student counselors practiced their attentive listening skills and asked the actor/characters open-ended questions about their lives. The counseling exercise resulted in an expanded characters narrative. During the rehearsal process for The Wild Party, two counselors repeated this process of using counseling skills as a strategy for character development. Student actors in The Wild Party were asked to participate in a one half-hour counseling interview. In contrast to a real counseling session, the counselors were not interested in encouraging a re-storying of the narrative that would help the client to experience personal growth and healing; rather, the goal was to illicit a narrative from the actor/character that would heighten an awareness of their intentions, motivations, feelings, relationships and conflicts in the play. Since the actors in these counseling sessions were in character, there were no concerns that as actors their personal life stories would be involved. To process their experiences as actors in a counseling session, they were asked to give feedback about the session in written and discussion form. The actors came to the counseling sessions in character sometimes in clothing that their character might wear and using the gestures that the character might use. Earlier in the rehearsal process, the actors were asked to discuss with the director, the “CROW” or given circumstances that included a description of the character’s physical attributes, relationships, objectives and where and when. The counselors’ goal was to ask the actors to reveal the secrets of their character. The actors were told that in the

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counseling sessions they would be asked open-ended questions such as “Tell me a little bit about yourself,” but otherwise, they were given very little direction or prompting about what to expect in the session. This freedom helped them to have the acting experience of improvising in their character rather than delivering responses that were prepared before the session. At some points in the session the counselor might say, “Tell me more about that?” or “How did you feel about that?” “What is your relationship to your partner?” Counselors would ask any spontaneous question that would require the actor to expand the character’s narrative. The counseling interviews served two purposes in the rehearsal process. First, the actors engaged in an improvisation of their character by developing a present relationship to the counselor. Second, their improvised responses formed a back-story or narrative for the character. By forming a character narrative that extended beyond the script, the actors found a depth of character that took them beyond a conception of the characters as stereotypes. The assumption was that a narrative of “secrets” about the character would enhance their performances. As a way of illustrating the effect of the sessions, the counselors collected examples of the feedback about the counseling experience from the actors. Actors were asked to write responses to two questions. First, “What did you learn about your character from the session with the counselor?” Some responses included: It solidified my character more, I am more certain of where I came from and what my personal trajectory at the wild party ... I feel more connected to my character and to her life story. (Miss Madelaine True)

Another actor responded, I finally felt my character live within me. I think what helped most was the stories that came from my mouth with incredible images ... The fast-paced questions did not give me the actor time to think about how my character should answer them, rather my character did answer them, and I simply learned from her. I feel inspired and finally connected to my character as a person. (Dolores Montoya)

The second question the actors were asked was, “Did you find the energy of your character expand or deplete after the session with the counselor? An example response was Immediately after the session, the character’s energy was depleted. Afterwards, in later rehearsals, the energy of the character was expanded. There was more meat to his intentions and desires, and all of his gestures,

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Each counseling session was videotaped. A description of the videotaped sessions illustrates the counseling process and shows how the results can be seen in the production. The first video clips show two characters, Phil and Oscar. They are described in the script of The Wild Party as two gay males who perform a “brother” act in vaudeville. They are not real brothers but rather Oscar and Phil have created an act together on stage and in the process have developed a relationship. The two live as a couple and have strong feelings for each other. Both characters remarked in their individual sessions that they had thought of something that had not occurred to them previously. The first counselor met with Oscar and the second counselor met with Phil in separate rooms. It is very interesting to compare the two different narratives that these characters provided about each other. In the counseling session, Oscar tells his narrative. He grew up in New York and learned early to seek attention since his parents abandoned him. He described how he turned to prostitution in order to support himself. Oscar tells the story of meeting Phil and discovering a creative spark when playing the piano with him. He describes his attraction to Phil and how they came to move in together. He describes Phil as reliable and a source of stability and always around ready to fill Oscar’s need for sex and attention. Oscar says, “Phil always knows what I need and he’s always there for me.” Oscar continues to say that he would never leave Phil but often misses the excitement of sex and attention from others. He describes one of the nights when he picks up someone at a party and goes back to the man’s apartment. He describes coming home to Phil in the morning. He believes that Phil is not aware that he has been with someone else. As he tells the story, he becomes aware of the damage his deceitfulness might have on Phil and their relationship. In the session, he begins to uncover the conflict between his need for attention and excitement and his need for the comfort and stability he has with Phil. His insights into this conflict deepen his need to deny his behavior to avoid losing Phil whom he realizes maybe hurt by his behavior. In his feedback, the actor says of the counseling session I learned that my character has problems with commitment and staying with one person. I also learned that I love being the center of attention and that my life wasn’t that easy.

About his performance the actor says,

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I found my energy as Oscar expanded after the session because I was still psychologically thinking as the character outside of the world of the play. I kept focusing on what I had said to the counselor and I was trying to reflect on that.

In Phil’s counseling session with the second counselor, Phil tells the same story of Oscar’s night out from a very different point of view. Phil presents in the counseling session as a naive, innocent person. He creates the narrative of a person who has run away from farm life in the Midwest after the death of his caregiver. Phil says it was a long journey from the Midwest to New York. When he arrives, he meets Oscar at a bar where Oscar is at the piano. They talk for a longtime. Phil is excited. He thinks Oscar is a wonderful guy and talks about how he loves singing with Oscar. He becomes dependent on Oscar and on their vaudeville act together, which provides the funds that he needs to survive in the city. Phil talks about how Oscar seeks attention from other guys at parties but he always comes home and that everything is great. Phil then talks about a time when Oscar didn’t come home and remembers how worried he was about Oscar. He begins to sense that he is more upset than he thought about Oscar’s sexual behavior. At this turning point in the character’s session, Phil realizes that things are not so great as he thought and that he is upset with Oscar. This is a significant shift for Phil and adds another dimension to his character. The actor gives the following feedback. He says, “I learned that my character was a lot more aware of his surroundings than I originally thought. Also, I noticed that his vice is dependency on others to truly be himself. During the party thrown by Burrs and Queenie, Phil “freaks out” at Oscar. His discovery about his anger at Oscar’s behavior during the counseling session helped him to understand and more complete justify his rage during the play. This understanding made their relationship much more complicated and thus more realistic. “I learned more about Phil’s past and the roots of his dependency.” After the counseling sessions with Phil and Oscar, not only is there greater depth of character but also new insights on how they views about their relationship effects their interaction on stage. This depth of character development is particularly evident in their “brother act” as they sit together at the piano and sing a number entitled, “A Little M-M-M.” This song illustrates their sexual attraction and the theme of young lovers and the loss of innocence. Likewise, they sing another number entitled “Uptown,” a song that illustrates the trajectory of their financial success despite the failing nature of the relationship. Finally, when Oscar cheats on Phil at the party, Phil finds himself wandering around the room forlorn and despairing. He seeks out the company of Mae, another disenchanted,

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dependent, lover in the play. During the counseling session, Phil discovered his motivation for his connection with Mae. The actor playing Phil expressed that exploring his character’s narrative in the counseling session enhanced his performance. Another example of a counseling session used in the rehearsal process, is that of Dolores Montoya, who plays an aging actress who in The Wild Party tries to convince two Broadway producers to finance her comeback. In her narrative, she tells the counselor that she is afraid of dying and that she has some past “secrets” that she regrets. She describes in detail an abortion she had many years ago. As she tells the counselor the story, she describes the images in detail. She walks down a long dark walk alley alone. She enters a room with a table and a light bulb dangling above it. She describes a recurrent dream that she dies alone with her cat. The actor who plays Dolores gives the following feedback about her counseling session. I finally felt my character live within me. I think what helped most was the stories that came out of my mouth with incredible images…The fast paced questions did not give me the actress time to think about how my character should answer them, rather my character did answer them, and I simply learned from her. I feel inspired and finally connected to Dolores Montoya as a person.

These are just a few examples of the experiences of the actors in the counseling sessions and their reflections on how the sessions affected the character’s narrative and their own performances in The Wild Party. As an interesting side note, there were some anecdotal comments that the experience of acting in the play and the experience of participating in the counseling session may have affected their party behavior as college students. In the theatre forum discussion after the play, an audience member asked the actors how being a character in this play might affect their behavior at a college party. The actors responded that they had become more aware of the behaviors that they witnessed at parties and were beginning to see causal connections, that is, how one thing leads to another. Further, they noted that people tend to get in trouble when they act mindlessly. In a later discussion with the student actors, one student commented that she had become less judgmental of the behaviors of others and realized that there are sometimes underlying narratives that contribute to a person’s choices such as the need to be liked, the need to get something they want or a need to control another person. Most importantly, in reflecting on their characters in the counseling situation, the student actors were beginning to reflect on their own

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motivations, social pressures and feelings about parties. In the counseling sessions and in their performances, the student actors gained the ability to detach themselves from social masks, to observe their behaviors and reflect upon them. They were then able to detach and to observe the behaviors of other college students at parties. College parties sometimes involve some of the same drinking behaviors and sexual encounters that occur in LaChiusa’s The Wild Party. This observation of students reflecting on their behavior in the real world is not the focus of our discussion here nor was it the focus of the counseling session during the rehearsal process. It is, however, an interesting side note. Using basic counseling skills in a session with student actors proves to have value in the development of a character narrative during the rehearsal process. Counseling sessions used in the rehearsal process may also have the potential to increase the actor’s ability to empathize.

Works Cited Brantley, Ben. “Stagestruck Sleuth, Crazy for Clues and Cues: Review of Curtains.” New York Times, March 23, 2007. Frank, Jonathan. “Interview with Michael John La Chiusa.” www.TalkinBroadway.com, Inc. La Chiusa, Michael John. Libretto for The Wild Party. New York: Rogers and Hammerstein, 2000. Kierkegaard, Soren. “Soren Kierkegaard quotes.” Thinkexist.com Pollock, Donald. “Masks and the Semiotics of Identity.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1: 3 (1995) 581-597.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN VISUAL EXPLORATIONS OF METAPHYSICAL IDEAS IN THE WORKS OF SARAH RUHL OLA KRASZPULSKA STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT OSWEGO

When beginning the design process, everyone on the production team relies strongly on the words of the playwright. Designers start with the step of analysis, with a careful look at the script and an examination of all its elements. Information such as location, time of day or blocking needs will be conveyed through the use of stage directions. Here are some examples of this: The action takes place in Willy Loman’s house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today. Arthur Miller, The Death of a Salesman; A country road. A tree. Evening. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; and PLACE: A metaphysical Connecticut. Or, a house that is not far from the city and not far from the sea. Sarah Ruhl, A Clean House. Quoted in order: (Miller, 10), (Beckett, 369), (Ruhl, 5)

Sarah Ruhl is a young and accomplished American playwright, who gained notoriety with such works as Eurydice and The Clean House, the latter of which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has as the setting described above. Ruhl’s “metaphysical Connecticut”, in the place of what should be a clear-cut stage direction, sounds more baffling than Beckett’s introduction to arguably the best known and incredibly poetic work of the absurd. “Metaphysics is a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being” (“metaphysics”). The metaphysical can additionally be defined as of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses, highly abstract and also of or relating to poetry especially of

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Metaphysics is slowly beginning to sound a lot like the idea of theatre: concerned with the fundamental nature of being, a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses, highly abstract, highly intellectual and marked by unconventional imagery. The idea of truth seeking is by no means a novel one for an author or artist. Art reflects on the truth, the essence, and the unexplained. Through distilling the essence of life, are plays really a study in metaphysics? The result of this study is the visual play in front of the audience: set, lights, sounds, costumes and the actions of the actor. Each night will be different, therefore making this experiment imperfect, as the same results will never be achieved. The works examined in this essay include The Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and In the Next Room, each of which captures a mix of metaphor and reality in its quest for truth. For this metaphysical study in scenography, The Clean House and Dead Man’s Cell Phone are the middle ground of stylized magical realism, Eurydice is a world of its own and In the Next Room is the most realistic, though not without surprises. All of these plays have very different visual approaches as well as some similarities in their visual explorations of metaphysical ideas. As a playwright, Sarah Ruhl believes in designers creating a world out of nothing, a suggestive reality, a metaphysical realm. She goes to say at the end of Passion Play Cycle: I think the designers need to think in terms of metaphor, transformation and empty space. ... I encourage designers to not be intimidated by the stage directions. (239-241)

She has a large awareness of the design aspect of her work, as demonstrated in the BOMB interview with Paula Vogel. Two quotes of note: For example; one thing that bores me lately- scene endings. The light’s change and there’s a sound cue and we’ve just accepted that. It’s as simple a device as a velvet curtain opening. Nothing’s wrong with it. But I find that it’s technological, so it pulls me out of the play, but not in the Brechtian sense of you’re in the theatre. Instead it lulls me in a televised way. (59)

The call for creativity is very clear. “Take people’s money away and give them back their imagination” (59) - she says.

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In Sarah Ruhl’s Clean House, the clean house as a space is a metaphor for the lives of the women in this play. The story is a comedy about class issues, house cleaning, death and love. It focuses on four female characters, Virginia and Lane- the sisters, Matilde- the Brazilian housekeeper in pursuit of the perfect joke- and Ana, the “impossibly charismatic” (5) other woman and the mother figure. In addition to the aforementioned visual of “metaphysical Connecticut” the stage directions call for: A white living room. White couch, white vase, white lamp, white rug. A balcony. (5)

All that clean pure space stands for something. Amidst it all we have the character of Matilde, who is in mourning after her parents and therefore clad in black. Suddenly there is a contrast to the white, a contrast to the clean and pure, a contrast to Lane, resulting in a focused stage picture which is anticipating the conflicts in the script. While there are some very practical requirements for Clean House, such as the need to create a living room space, the need for a balcony and the moment in the tundra when we see Charles carrying the tree, the metaphysical nature of the reality allows designers for a playful imagination and a reality that is suggestive at most. In this reality, the idea of action having a visual impact on the space is very appealing. This makes even a simple objective like “to clean” exciting. What goes? What stays? Who moves it and how do we get from point A to point B? These questions provide a great opportunity to through the growth of the characters find ways of altering the space in a realistic, physical manner. There are also the metaphysical directions that pull the audience out of the fourth-wall reality: In the distance, Charles walks across the stage in a heavy parka. He carries a pick axe. In the living room it is snowing. (74)

Designers and directors alike will have to make the choice: what is snow in this play? Is it a collection of white flurries fluttering in the air? Is it a physical obstacle hindering Charles’ journey? Or are they a visual representation of his reality in the state of hope, in the state of denial? There are no wrong answers, only right ones that may be wrong for a particular production, for a particular hypothesis of the experiment.

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Snow is not the only thing falling in this play. After a day of apple picking, on the balcony by the sea, Ana settles down with Matilde, and they begin sampling the apples. They start taking bites of each apple And if they don’t think it’s a perfect apple They throw it into the sea. The sea is also Lane’s living room. Lane sees the apples fall into her living room. She looks at them. (56)

Of course, a rain of apples is a stunning and fun visual for the audience. What is also interesting, on top of its theatricality, this action creates a link between the two women on the balcony and Lane. Lane does not ignore the apples, but rather looks at them. Like the fruit, she has been discarded for not being what somebody else wanted. Lane was not the perfect apple. To Ana and Matilde, the apples represent joy and life; to Lane they are something completely different. The action takes place in both locations at the same time, and both are visible to the audience; thus creating a very cinematic style. The Clean House has other strong cinematic aspects to its style, not the least of them being the use of subtitles introducing each snippet/chapter in the characters’ lives. There is something meta-theatrical about pulling an audience out of the world of the play and inform them what it is that they are seeing, as is the case with such subtitles as: “Virginia and Lane experience a primal moment in which they are 7 and 9 years old” (87). Or “Lane makes a house-call to her husband’s soul mate (88).” Ruhl is by no means the first playwright to use this approach. One needs to seek no further than blue roses to find the same device in Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Sarah Ruhl combines these slides with not only the metaphysical stage directions, but there are also flashback scenes, in which Matilde’s parents are introduced. In these, Matilde’s monologues are the subtitles, are the underscoring. As Matilde tells us about her parents, we get to experience how They dance. They laugh until laughing makes them kiss. They kiss until kissing makes them laugh. (13)

The play also has very abstract notions, such as the scene aptly subtitled “Charles Performs Surgery on the Woman He Loves”.

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The white living room has become a hospital. Or the idea of a hospital. There is a balcony above the white living room. Anna lies under a sheet. Beautiful music. Subtitle flashes. Charles takes out surgical equipment. He does surgery on Ana. It is an act of love. If the actor who plays Charles is a good signer, it would be nice if he could sing an ethereal medieval love song in Latin about being medically cured by love. He sings acapella as he does the surgery. If the actress who plays Ana is a good singer, it would be nice of she recovered from the surgery and slowly sat up and sang a contrapuntal melody. When the surgery is over, Charles takes off Ana’s sheet. Underneath the sheet, she is dressed in a lovely dress. They kiss. (41-42)

What is fantastic is about these directions, other than the poetry and action built into the words, is the possibility of the “if”. As already established, each production, each metaphysical experiment will be different, largely due to a whole number of variables. When looking at the same production company creating a performance which plays night after night, there may be some disruption to the constants, but the largest variable remains the audience. The exciting thing about the “if” is that it allows for an actor who does not sing, but is nonetheless able to perform this poetry, finding a different way to express the Latin love song or the contrapuntal melody. Imagination is key to exploring this metaphysical idea. What is typical of Ruhl’s plays is that the devices required do not call for money, they call for creativity. The room of string in Eurydice could not be easier to construct- one can suspend string even without a fly space, with little to no expense. Different theatre companies have illustrated it in a variety of ways, but the emotion of a father caring for his daughter is always the shining factor of this visual exploration. The result is pure poetry. Another creative visual exploration is the cell phone ballet in Dead Man’s Cellphone, and it is the reason behind the tender scene in the snow at the end of In the Next Room. One could produce it without a snow bag,

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with nothing a subtle light effect. The result would again be pure visual poetry. In Eurydice, which is Ruhl’s take on the classical myth, the set calls for things such as “a raining elevator” (331) which can be executed in a multitude of ways which do not necessarily have to burden the production budget or demand a certain kind of space. An actual functional elevator would tell the story brilliantly, especially when helped by rushing water, but thanks to the strength of the script a similar effect could be achieved with a wet actor OR blue lights. For the metaphysical experiment of the visual story these will be amongst the variables that determine the outcome of the production, while true to the stories heart. Ruhl’s call for creativity allows designers to really commit to an idea and not feel locked into only one way of executing this design. Numerous clues granting design freedom can be found in the details of stage directions such as: An abstracted River of Forgetfulness. (331) The set should allow for fluid transitions from moment to moment - from underworld to overworld and back again. (332) The Interesting Apartment- a giant loft space with no furniture. (350) The underworld. There is no set change. (357)

In the underworld/ overworld reality of this play the set is fluid and lights fill any void. While the visuals that are written are strong, there are select principle visuals that matter to the story telling, that can be expressed in a multitude of ways, while still communicating effectively. The search for the metaphysical in the story relies entirely on identifying these choice moments. Scenographically, a few moments really standout as those very pieces: the first is the room of string and the second the river of forgetfulness. The need of the father to provide for Eurydice is very touching, and the actor creating the room is the perfect physicalization and visualization of that love. It is important to note that Time passes. It takes time to build a room out of string. Every so often, the Father looks at her, happy to see her, while he makes her a room out of string. (367)

When this moment is so clearly established, when the time is taken to really allow it to develop, the symbolism behind the gesture is very strong. At the end of the story, upon realizing that with Eurydice leaving, the father goes through a “second death (400)”, he dismantles the room of

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string, and it is its absence that first alerts Eurydice to the fact that something is off. He dismantles the string room matter-of-fact. There’s nothing else to do. This can take time. It takes time to dismantle a room made of string. (401)

Afterwards: “Eurydice returns and sees that her string room is gone” (403). Again, the timing of these moments becomes crucial to their visual and metaphysical success of each production. The river of forgetfulness is the other key piece, which needs to be staged correctly and with little enough ambiguity that the audience can follow exactly the decisions each character is making at the exact time that they commit to those choices. This does not mean that an actual river must be present, nor requires blue lights or water projections. Ruhl’s writing welcomes answers of creativity. However, it is critical that as characters dip themselves in the river, be it through blocking, lights, or sets, their actions are clearly outlined to the audience, who can follow along on the emotional journey. Helpful in establishing this, will be the fantastic sound design, laid out with precision by the playwright. The score is very specific and the decisions are clearly outlined. In this script the “ping” is the “small metallic sound of forgetfulness (403),” not to be confused with the “ding (411)” of the elevator. The sounds are very detailed, and Ruhl’s attitude to music as whole is greatly revealed in the “score” of this play, both the actual sounds and their verbal descriptions. Such other sounds include: musty dripping sound, (347) the sound of a door closing, (350) the sound of champagne popping, (353) A clatter. Strange sounds- xylophones, brass bands, sounds of falling, sounds of vertigo. Sounds of breathing, (356) strange watery noises. Drip, drip, drip. (357)

These go from the mundane sounds of everyday life, to metaphysical and abstract ones, leaving one wondering what vertigo does sound like. This list does not even include actor generated sounds, which are plentiful in the script. The actors are responsible for creating the score through the couple singing together, Orpheus teaching Eurydice rhythm, or Eurydice’s theme, sang by Orpheus, which becomes the refrain of relationship, the haunted melody of life. In the “actor generated category” there is also the

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bizarre occurrence which takes place when Eurydice first enters the underworld. She walks toward the audience and opens her mouth, trying to speak. There is a great humming noise. She closes her mouth. The humming noise stops. She opens her mouth for the second time, attempting to tell her story to the audience. There is a great humming noise. She closes her mouth- the humming noise stops. (359)

The audience gains an understanding of Eurydice once they understand the language of the stones, which is a: very quiet language, like if the pores in your face opened up and talked. (359)

The juxtaposition of the quiet language, with the metaphysical metaphor is precisely what makes Sarah Ruhl’s work so creatively challenging and rewarding. Ruhl’s choices about sound are very specific, as the one of the characters who largely shapes the story of the play is Orpheus, who in Greek mythology is a legendary musician. Words shape the world for Eurydice, music shapes it for Orpheus. The play succeeds at capturing both, the world of words and the world of music. In the visual flexibility of that world, Ruhl offers a few very specifically chosen costume ideas. For Orpheus and Eurydice she calls for “Swimming outfits from the 1950s” (333). Eurydice enters the underworld in: “the kind of 1930s suit that women wore when they eloped” (359). The era of the suit might simply be the look which best describes “eloped bride”, the look which creates a clean silhouette to contrast with the context of the underworld, or works as a nice juxtaposition to the swim suits from 1950s creating a place that is not really of any given place or time. The 1950s bathing suits offer a fun, nostalgic look, while avoiding being to risqué or sensual, highlighting how the two lovers: “are a little too young and a little too in love” (333). In the father’s case, the cut of the clothes (suit) is not as important as the color gray, “Father, dressed in gray suit” (343) indicative of the inbetween state he is in, in the underworld, in the nothingness, in the land of the stones. “[The] Nasty, interesting man appears wearing a trench coat” (345). The trench coat clad man could be perceived as dangerous by a modern day audience, who may question what he is hiding under there,

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making it a perfect choice for someone nasty, yet interesting. While the four choices are very specific, costume designers are still left with a lot of freedom, for designing elements such as the Lord of the Underworld (both big and small) and Eurydice’s wedding dress (on which the nasty interesting man comments, calling it “interesting”). There is a certain similarity in stage direction structure as well as content between Clean House and Eurydice. When Matilde describes her parents: They are dancing. They are not the best dancers in the world. (13) When Eurydice tries to learn her melody: She sings the melody. She misses a few notes. She’s not the best singer in the world. (337)

The playwright seems to be suggesting that love is even stronger when we know someone’s imperfections and that in some way they make the other even more endearing. Matilde loves her parents more for their lack of dancing abilities; Orpheus loves Eurydice more for her failed attempts at the melody. True love appears to replace the pursuit of perfection for a comfortable familiarity. Perfection, on the other hand, may be found in the lack of knowing, the unfamiliar… and like in The Dead Man’s Cell Phone, may be entirely untrue. In this play, described by Charles Isherwood of The New York Times as a hallucinatory poetic fantasy that blends the mundane and the metaphysical, the blunt and the obscure, the patiently bizarre and the bizarrely moving. (Dead Man’s Cell Phone, 109)

the protagonist, Jean has found a dead man in a café and through discovering his cell phone, unraveled her version of who he really was. As is revealed in the end of the play, who Gordon really is varies drastically from Jean’s initial ideas. There are two main parallels which can be drawn with Eurydice- there is once again the theme of loss, explored from all perspectives- the departed as well as those left behind. The theme of loss is consistent with most of Ruhl’s works, but what sets Eurydice and A Dead Man’s Cell Phone apart is that in both works Ruhl provides the audience with a glimpse of the afterlife. While this is not typical with works on the theme of death and loss, this play is light and farcical at times, with a reverent reference to the film noir genre (evident in the moments of espionage, and stage directions such

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as “Film noir music” [76]). In addition to humor being part of the character and action, it can be found in the playwright’s stage directions. In the café she comments on the deceased Gordon. He doesn’t look all that dead. He looks- still. (7)

When Jean gets invited to Gordon family’s dinner, she finds that: Everyone wears black, except for the mother, who is in a bright red getup. A flurry of activity getting to the table. Everyone sits in the wrong spot. (33)

In the airport struggle: Jean kicks the gun out of the stranger’s hand. Jean kicks the stranger on a special part of her leg so that she crumples to the ground. (Surprised at her own daring) Whoa! (79)

These sets of directions indicate action and energy, as well as being consistent with Ruhl’s storytelling style. Both in the directions and dialogue the playwright uses vivid imagery and metaphors. Once Gordon’s dark secret is revealed and the audience is aware of his “business trips to Rome” were really ventures in organ trafficking, Hermia tells a really sad story about a Brazilian man. He wrote these sad letters to our home. He would draw pictures of his lost kidney. It looked like a broken heart. (74)

Suddenly the two women’s discussion becomes very serious, the mood changes and there is a very clear beat in the script before the action moves on. Jean is very affected by this, and when Gordon’s phone rings she decides to go pick up the kidney from Brazil. When it is time to make the pick up, she has the following to say to The Other Woman, who is now in disguise. Actually, we’re in a bit of a pickle. In our country we can only give our organs away for love. I mean I’m not saying our country is great or anything because at the moment- well, you know- but in terms of organ laws- it has to be love. It’s a strange law, right, because how can you measure love? I’m not sure you can “measure love” (77).

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When the deal doesn’t go through, as the stranger is in fact interested in money above love Jean offers: I’m sorry I have no money to give you. I did make something for you though, just a token, it’s a lamp in the shape of a kidney, it says, I was willing to give you away so that someone else shall live- so that when you turn it on. (78)

A fairly brutal fight ensues between the two women, during which: The stranger hits Jean on the head with the gun. Jean falls to the ground. The lamp falls and breaks. A flash of light. (79)

The scene directly after takes place in the afterlife, where Jean gets to meet Gordon face to face. It is the physical event- the kidney lamp falling and breaking- which transcends into a metaphysical one- Jean finding herself in the afterlife. Many metaphors create the world of the play, but in addition to the kidney lamp, there are two very strong images that really create the designers’ playground. The first is the rain of paper. Dwight and Jean have an intimate moment at the stationery store, over their shared love of papersomething tangible, real, that can be held and caressed. One brother is represented by the cell-phone, the insistent ringing creating a presence in Jean’s imagination. The other brother is right there, in the moment like the embossed engravings on the creamy stationery. The phone rings. They kiss. Embossed stationery moves through the air slowly, like a snow parade. Lanterns made of embossed paper, houses made of embossed paper, light falling on paper, falling on Jean and Dwight, who are also falling. (56)

In her notes on the production Ruhl says: The paper houses that fall on Jean and Dwight at the end of Part One should ideally be made of high quality or handmade paper. Go to a paper store and touch the paper” (103).

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Sarah Ruhl really understands the tactile world, and speaks in a language that is so easily understood by designers and directors alike. She ends up with such a powerful metaphor, captured in a single image. This image suggests beauty and tenderness, sweetness and vulnerability, and also in some way- it is almost like a dance. The other passage of similar structure is actually titled the cell-phone ballet. A cell phone ballet. Beautiful music. People moving through the rain with umbrellas, talking into their cell phones, fragments of lost conversations float up. Jean listens. (87)

It is unclear what exactly happens in the underworld/ otherworld (although Gordon says that it is hell). The fact presented clearly in this play is that the afterlife revolves around spending your time forever with the one person you love the most. A curious, very metaphysical concept suggests that there can be multiples of the self in the afterworld, to serve everyone’s needs. The thing that manages to penetrate the shield of the other-worldly is the bits and pieces of cell phone chatter that float around and get captured here. Jean: You can hear cell phones here? Gordon: Oh, yes. The only communication device God didn’t invent was gossip, and that’s the most advanced technology to date. It’s what they call the music of the spheres- listen… (87)

In one of the more famous depictions of hell, Jean Paul Sartre says that hell is other people. How does the Ruhl-ist afterlife compare? It is solitary, but not quite as it stays lonely, but with the suggestions of others. Loneliness is a plague of the modern world, perhaps made even more so by the increased use of cell phones. Moira Burke, until recently a graduate student at the Human-Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon, used to run a longitudinal study of 1,200 Facebook users. In this study she found that direct communication, like sending a personalized message, or using the chat feature “increased your social capitol”, while “non-personalized use of Facebook—scanning your friends’ status updates and updating the world on your own activities via your wall, or what Burke calls “passive consumption” and “broadcasting”—correlates to feelings of disconnectedness (Marche). The traditional use of a phone, which is that of a conversation, clearly falls under the category which increases your social capitol. However, in this play, bits and pieces of other people’s conversations are

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floating through the air, in no way interacting with the characters. It is not hard to determine which side the cell phone ballet falls under- the passive consumption and broadcasting. So, the Ruhl-ist hell is a lonely one, especially for a protagonist whose person she loves the most is a figment of her imagination. Ruhl does create a carefully structured image- the proof is once again in the notes to the director. She first admits: I kept a record of conversations I overheard on cell phones as I was writing this play to use as found text in the cell-phone ballet. The notion was that fragments from the ruin float up and meet Jean- and that they are almost beautiful. ... You might then consider going around and recording people’s overheard cell phone conversations. Or use messages that have already been left on your phone. (100)

Technology in this play is used as a metaphor to explore loneliness, closeness, relationships, everything in between and the metaphysical nature of it all. The phone stops ringing. Hermia: Are you ever in a very quiet room all alone and you feel as though you can hear a cell phone ringing and you look everywhere and you cannot see one but there are so many ringing in the world that you must hear some dim echo. Nothing is really silent anymore- and after a death- an almost silence- you have to bury it bury it very deep. (70)

The topic of technology is explored in a whole different way in Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the vibrator play. In both dramatic structure and visual expression, this play resembles early realism. In the dramatic structure, unlike Ruhl’s other plays where there are scenes as found in the Dead Man’s Cell Phone, subtitles as found in The Clean House and Eurydice as well as movements as found in Eurydice, In the Next Room or the vibrator play, in a very conservative way clearly divides the action into two acts, which are equally conservatively designated into few scenes. The set is for the most part a unit set and, like any good nod to early realism, it takes place in a living room. The room is furnished with: A piano. Closed curtains. Knickknacks. One chaise. A birdcage. A pram/bassinet.

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What gives this play a bit of spice is titular next room. Next to the living room, a private doctor’s room, otherwise known as an operating theater. ... In the operating theater, a medical table covered with a sheet. A basin for washing hands. Several vibrators. And an outlet, to plug in electrical apparatus. (4)

What gives this play a dose of Rulhism is the way it ends, with a shift of visual perception: Although the domestic space seemed terribly permanent- a settee, a statuette- suddenly it disappears and we are in a small winter garden. Snow covers trees that in the spring flower with pink flowers. (142)

The playwright notes when introducing the scene that the relationship between the living room and operating theatre is all important in the design, as things happen simultaneously in the living room and operating theater. (4)

In “Alternating Currents of Desire” James Al-Shamma further incorporates the importance of this separation, this simultaneity noting that “the central wall separates along the gender lines and situates the power object, the vibrator, in the male domain” (141). Power shifts can be directly traced from the Doctor to Mrs. Givings as the play progresses, with the action of the walls going away at the end, ending the division between male and female, as they become one. Through the course of the action, Catherine attempts to steal the power through sneaking into her husband’s office and to share the power through convincing the Doctor to conduct the experiment on her, but it is only when both Catherine and the Doctor give up their desire for power, that their desire for each other is awakened, while the physical realm of their house is abandoned. Al-Shamma says: “Exclusive of the final scene, Ruhl’s unit setting would be appropriate to naturalism or realism” (164). Though Sarah Ruhl does state that

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one might consider, rather than recorded sound, using only the live piano if one of the actors is good at playing the piano. One might consider, rather than the usual lighting instruments, something ancient. That is to say- a play hovering at the dawn of electricity- how should the theatre itself feel? Terribly technological or terribly primitive or neither- at any rate let the use of technology feel like a choice. (5)

While this advice is helpful for the designer, we get only a sense of whimsy, nothing metaphysical. The visual meaning is conveyed through simple clues and metaphors. The closed curtains, keeping everything in, every secret contained. The birdcage, a symbol of freedom lost. The rocking chair, which provides a sense of movement, with nowhere to go. The electrical lamps are a marker in time, a reflection on plot, and a sense of brightness or a sense of hope. All characters react to these lamps in a different way- some like them on and bask in the glow; some turn them off, resulting in sitting in the dark. The metaphors are not all limited to electricity. There is a beautiful and tender scene between husband and wife. When Mr. Givings, the doctor, finally agrees to do the treatment on his wife, he asks her to undress. She starts to undress and realizes there are too many buttons in the back. Mrs. Givings: I can’t do this bit without your help. Dr. Givings: Oh- sorry. He helps her with the buttons, and then turns around again, the gentleman. (93)

After the treatment, which does not go well, Catherine is prepared to storm off. But she cannot, as again, she needs her husband’s help with her buttons. As he is flustered, this takes twice as long (he buttons them crooked the first time) and in this moment, she reveals to him a secret romantic gesture from years ago. When she was a young girl, she wrote her name in the snow for him to see, but it melted before he got to see it. You didn’t notice the first snow? My God. When I first met you and was nothing more than a girl I wrote my name in the snow outside your window- I would have done anything for you to notice me- you were older and seemed so wise, so calm- and so marvelously indifferent to me. I don’t know if you ever saw- it melted- no matter, if you saw my name in the snow all you’d see was a natural “substance” (97).

Moved, he reaches out to touch her. The buttoning of the dress is pure theatrical lyricism.

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Just like in Catherine’s story, the conclusion of this play takes place in the snow outside. The playwright makes a full circle, and the couples’ freedom rebels against the constraints of Victorian norm. The scenery transcends the prison of the house, the “his and her sides” and the couple as well as the audience are left in a garden covered in snow. He lies on his back and makes an angel in the snow. She lies on top of him. They make an angel. They make their wings go back and forth. It snows on them. Outside, on the street corners, the gas lamps go on, one by one, flickering, Insubstantial. (143)

The metaphor of electricity is not forgotten, but used now to shine a light on the couple’s future, illuminating their now brighter path and is a perfect example of Ruhl’s use of imagery. “Ruhl stages the fantastic not as escapism, but rather to metaphorically reveal subjective experience” (Al- Shamma, 186). Sarah Ruhl’s work can be lighter or humorous, yet there is always a statement on human nature, the human condition and human relationships explored through unconventional visual and aesthetic means. As an artist and author, Sarah Ruhl can be described as a truth seeker. This alludes well to how her work connects to the metaphysical: her plays are concerned with the fundamental nature of being, a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses. Her works are additionally characterized by being highly abstract, highly intellectual and marked by unconventional imagery. Through the analysis of The Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man’s Cell Phone and In the Next Room it is evident that Sarah Ruhl as a playwright assists designers in creating a world of suggestive reality, a metaphysical realm. In these four plays, as well as in her other titles, Ruhl distills the essence of life, creating a study in metaphysics. The results of her “studies” have become world renowned and critically acclaimed. No matter what works she comes up with in the future, they will most certainly have that very Ruhlistic visual representation of metaphysical ideas that her audiences and critics have come to cherish and love. Transitions are fluid. Space is fluid. There is not a lot of stuff on stage. Enjoy yourself. (Dead Man’s Cell Phone, 104)

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Works Cited Al- Shamma, James. Sarah Ruhl: A Critical Study of the Plays. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2011. Beckett, Samuel. A Samuel Beckett Reader. New York: Grove Press. 1976. Marche, Stephen. “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Atlantic Home 10 05 2012, n. pag. 14 Nov. 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebookmaking-us-lonely/308930/ Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Pennsylvania: Penguin Books, 1976. “Metaphysics.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. 17 Sept. 2013. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphysics. “Metaphysical.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. 17 Sept. 2013. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphysical Ruhl, Sarah. The Clean House. New York: Samuel French, 2007. —. The Clean House and Other Plays. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006. —. Dead Man’s Cell Phone. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008. —. In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2010. —. Passion Play. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2010. Vogel, Paula, and Sarah Ruhl. “BOMB.” BOMB. No.99 (2007): 54-59. 14 Nov. 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40427855.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN LOVE TRIANGLES AND TRIANGULAR LOVES: A HOME FOR THREE IN SARAH RUHL’S IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY1 NOELIA HERNANDO-REAL UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID

The traditional saying reads “Home is where your heart is,” a simple statement that encapsulates the close and interdependent relationships in the triangle formed by home, family, and love. This triangle, which apparently promises the basis for a successful personal life, has been widely used to mark gendered geographies and, consequently, to confine women at the very center of the triangle so that the whole structure does not collapse. As D. A. Leslie affirms with regards to the impact of New Traditionalism nowadays, “home as a place has been central to the ideological construction of female identity” and home is still “the defining space of femininity. It is the home as place that consolidates a woman’s identity” (307). With In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (2009), Sarah Ruhl revisits one of the favorite topics in American theater: the family drama and its triangular representation. While in the works of canonized male playwrights the most usual triangle is formed by male characters— Willy Loman, Biff, and Happy in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman2 (1949) and James Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956)—a male triangle established by power struggles that keeps these plays in motion, in In the Next Room Sarah Ruhl creates multiple triangular relationships as her female characters try to redefine themselves, their homes and the way in which they imagine love. As with many other playwrights before her, Sarah Ruhl chooses the realistic form to present onstage the topic of the American family, a topic that has worried American audiences, as J. Ellen Gainor has said, since the beginning of the 20th century (171). Nevertheless, it is in the surprising number of different triangles that Ruhl puts on the stage, and more

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significantly in the triangle formed by man, woman, and vibrator, as implied in the title, that Ruhl aims to make her audience think about our own love stories and our roles in them. Sarah Ruhl sets In the Next Room in the 1880s, which is a superb setting to suggest the quadrangular identity that used to direct women’s lives at the time. As Barbara Welter claims in her article “The Cult of True Womanhood” (1996), the identity of True Women was based on four principles: purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. Once married, women had to remain pure in order to restrain their husbands’ sexual and base needs. A True Woman is a New Eve, God’s tool to save the world through her passionless nature. Her home must be a tranquil space, a refuge where her tired husband can take shelter and enjoy the security that his wife’s submissiveness to his needs, to duty, and to God assured. This setting has led some critics to see the play as merely a critique of “Victorian gender roles” (Schmidt 669). However, I believe that In the Next Room addresses contemporary issues, mainly women’s anxiety about their own identities and the still needed reconstruction of the notions of home and love. As Elysa Gardner wrote for USA Today, by turns deftly farcical and deeply poignant, In the Next Room raises questions that transcend gender and, for that matter, time. (11)

The female protagonists of In the Next Room, Mrs. Givings—a seemingly happy new mother married to Dr. Givings—and Mrs. Daldry—a woman who seemingly suffers from hysteria—do their best throughout the play to revolt against the quadrangular set of principles that direct their lives, forcing other characters to reconsider their own roles and their love stories as well. In his 1986 article “A Triangular Theory of Love,” Professor Robert J. Sternberg provides a useful analytical tool to understand triangular loves and love triangles in Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room. According to Stenberg The triangular theory of love holds that love can be understood in terms of three components that together can be viewed as forming the vertices of a triangle. These three components are intimacy (the top vertex of the triangle), passion (the left-hand vertex of the triangle), and decision/commitment (the right-hand vertex of the triangle). (1986, 119)

As Sternberg says, the three components interact with each other in different ways, triggering thus different kinds of love relationships. It is the perfect and committed balance among the three components that

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assures one of a complete and satisfying love story (1986, 119). The first component, intimacy, is defined as “the feeling of closeness that gives rise to warmth and caring; it’s what allows people to share confidences and give and receive emotional support” (Sternberg, 2007a). The second component, passion, refers to the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and related phenomena in loving relationships” (Sternberg 1986, 119). And the component that closes the triangle, commitment, “has to do with our drive to maintain a relationship over the long term” (Sternberg 2007a). This triangular theory of love sustains the most common kinds of love we experience: from liking, which is all about intimacy, to infatuated love, which is all passion, without intimacy and commitment, through companionate love, the result of intimacy and commitment, romantic love, the union of intimacy and passion without commitment, or consummate love, the summum bonum of love stories, which includes all three components—intimacy, passion, and commitment (1986, 123-24). Right at the very beginning of In the Next Room, Sarah Ruhl confronts the audience with an image and a situation that makes the audience question the present state of the Givings’ love story and wonder the kind of love story in which they are involved. As the playwright confessed in an interview with Gwen Orel, she usually starts her plays “with an image,” fleeing away from the patriarchal conception of drama as pure conflict: Drama is many things; it’s observation, it’s poetry, it’s architecture, it’s confession … it’s argument but also opposition—like black, white; quiet, loud—not just people bickering. (66)

It is the 1880s and electricity has just been introduced into the domestic sphere. When the play opens, Mrs. Givings, the young wife of Dr. Givings, turns on her electric lamp and says to her baby Look baby, it’s light! No candle, no rusty tool to snuff it out, pure light, straight from man’s imagination into our living room! On, off, on, off— (She turns it off and on). (9)

This opening scene has symbolic implications on several levels. Firstly, the fact that Mrs. Givings is so excited about this new device is a first indicator that she needs changes. Second, as James Al-Shamma has pointed out, light as “illumination enables ... the acquisition of knowledge on the conceptual [plane]” (162). Thus, from the very beginning the audience is aware that Mrs. Givings is more than willing to absorb the new knowledge her husband keeps in the room of his own, in the operating

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theatre where he treats his hysteric patients with a vibrator. Indeed, light as a symbol of knowledge is exploited by Ruhl throughout the play with scenes alternating between light and darkness. At several points female characters argue about the changes that electric light brings and about whether or not it is better than candle light, which in a symbolic level is understood as their discussion about whether it is a good idea or not to enter the traditionally male domain of knowledge. And thirdly, the fact that lights are turned on and off so many times also point to the idea that the female characters’ identity is undergoing constant changes, which also has implications in their love stories. It is also significant to note that Mrs. Givings asserts that light comes “from man’s imagination into our living room”. That is, it is because of her husband’s imagination and will to innovate - he is one of the few doctors who believe in the power of the vibrator - that her living room, her home, her conception of love, and her self will change. Immediately after this first image, when we see Mrs. Givings playing with the lights, her husband enters and “walks through the space without saying hello to his wife” while she is watching him. It is only when he exits that Mrs. Givings says “Hello,” prompting her husband’s re-entrance (9). This situation is revealing in at least two ways. First, it suggests the lack of intimacy and passion, two of the components of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love. And second, as Mrs. Givings takes the lead to say hello and forces her husband’s re-entrance, the audience assumes that she wants to change their love story in some way, as revealed later on in the play. Thus, early in the play one can see that the Givings’ love story is one of empty love, which, as Sternberg says, emanates from the decision that one loves another and has commitment to that love in the absence of both the intimacy and passion components of love. (1986, 124)

Furthermore, in “Stories We Love By” Robert J. Sternberg categorizes twenty-six types of love stories that tend to “dominate Americans’ conceptions of love” (2007b) which include the cookbook love story, according to which partners understand their love story as a recipe in the sense that if they follow the instructions, their relationship will succeed; or the police love story, where one partner keeps the other constantly under surveillance (2007b). The Givings’ love story fits perfectly well in the sacrifice love story, where a partner sacrifices their own interest for those of their partner. Mrs. Givings has learned to sacrifice her own self so that her husband develops his career, being careless of his wife’s real feelings; apparently, she is all happiness.

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The Daldrys’ love story is as void as the Givings’ from the very start. To begin with, the fact that Mrs. Daldry has to be treated of hysteria reveals that she has a personal problem. As it is well known, one of the most extended illnesses for women at the time was hysteria.3 Of course, that the symptoms, as listed by Rachel P. Maines in The Technology of Orgasm (1999), included anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema, and vaginal lubrication (8)

helped raise the numbers.4 Unsurprisingly, in the later nineteenth century, Russell Thacher and John Butler estimated that “as many as three-quarters of the female population were ‘out of health’” (Maines 5). Psychologists and historians such as Rachel P. Maines have long questioned the validity of the diagnosis of hysteria at the time, pointing out that this disease paradigm promptly answers to androcentric definitions of sexuality, which explain both why such treatments were socially and ethically permissible for doctors and why women required them. (Maines 2)

As Maines argues, the diagnosis and treatment of hysteria had two sources: the proscription on female masturbation as unchaste and possibly unhealthful, and the failure of androcentrically defined sexuality to produce orgasm regularly in most women. (3)

Therefore, Sarah Ruhl—in order to make us reflect upon women’s subjugation to patriarchal power also nowadays—has consciously chosen the 1880s setting to refer to a point in history when women were diagnosed with hysteria almost randomly. The ways in which Mrs. Daldry is described —the reason why she married Mr. Daldry, how her husband treats her, and how easily the doctor comes to the conclusion that she is hysterical— are absolutely revealing about the Daldrys’ love story. Mrs. Daldry is described as “fragile and ethereal,” “her face is covered by a veil attached to a hat” and enters leaning “heavily on her husband’s arm” (10). Every descriptive detail points to her subjugated position in marriage. Indeed, as Mr. Daldry informs us, they got married because “I wanted to take care of her and protect her forever” (12). The veil she is wearing shows that she is a

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woman in mourning for her long dead love and, possibly, that she is hiding her true self. Furthermore, she is “very sensitive to light” (10); therefore, the lamps are turned off. Mrs. Daldry’s abjection of light symbolically represents her initial inability to enter the domain of knowledge that would make her react to change her love story. Doctor Givings asks Mr. Daldry about Mrs. Daldry’s symptoms, and it is Mr. Daldry who answers. Very obviously Mrs. Daldry has no voice in a problem that mainly concerns her. After listening to the symptoms—that she is weeping all day long, that she is muttering all the time about the green curtains she cannot clean, and about the grape jam she cannot make—the Doctor affirms: “It is a very clear case, … your wife is suffering from hysteria” (11-13). Nevertheless, what it is a very clear case is that Mrs. Daldry is tired of her triangular love, which, as the Givings’, is just made of commitment; and even in this she is failing, as she cannot perform the role of the True Woman any more; she cannot clean the curtains or make jam, hence, she is not making a home for her husband. But Mr. Daldry reveals other symptoms that the male characters disregard: “I’m afraid there is very little sympathy between us” (12), and furthermore, she cannot play the piano any more, since “her fingers do not work. In the living room. Or in any other room, if you take my meaning, Dr. Givings” (12). Thus, the audience immediately grasps Mrs. Daldry’s problem: she longs for passion and sex in capital letters, but this is not something that the male characters, participants in the androcentric view of sexuality, are ready to accept. Mrs. Daldry’s problem, nevertheless, finds a solution in the play in the form of a vibrator. Therefore, an instrument invented to control female sexuality and to maintain its androcentric conception is used by Ruhl to rewrite love stories and triangular loves. Common treatments for hysteria at the time included water massages, the rest cure—denounced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her famous short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”—and the vibrator. In an example of total patriarchal control over the female body, it was thought that the stimulation of the uterus, and the release of fluids, would help these women recover. This option, nonetheless, was by far better than lobotomies, another popular solution to hysteria. Including the word vibrator in the play’s title, and just writing a play where a vibrator is the main prop is not devoid of controversy. As Randy Gener wrote for American Theatre, “Ruhl’s play has caused quite a stir in the Bay Area press” (13), since critics thought this was a pornographic play. However, there is nothing pornographic about the play. Even when the female characters have “paroxysms,” these are described as follows

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She has a quiet paroxysm. Now remember that these are the days before digital pornography. There is no cliché of how women are supposed to orgasm, no idea in their heads of how they are supposed to sound when they climax. Mrs. Daldry’s first orgasm could be very quiet, organic, awkward, primal. Or very clinical. Or embarrassing natural. But whatever it is, it should not be a cliché, a camp version of how we expect all women sound when they orgasm. It is simply clear that she has some kind of relief. (17-18)

In Ruhl’s detailed description of how the female characters should orgasm, one notices that the main idea is to show that these women are entering a new world, discovering a set of sensations they had never experienced before, that is, that they are acquiring knowledge. It is in this sense that the vibrator in the title has a leading role in the play. Indeed, in productions such as the one by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the director had the feeling that the play is “about a prop.” As theatre critic Randy Gener writes about this production, the vibrator has a leading role as it spends “more visible time on stage than the actors” (12). The vibrator, as theatre scholar James Al-Shamma argues, “is a blatant phallic symbol,” so once the female characters appropriate it, they pose “a serious threat to patriarchal structures of knowledge and power” (166). Mrs. Daldry does not just feel miraculously revived after being treated with the vibrator, she also feels enlightened. It is no coincidence then that it is after being treated with the vibrator—and she keeps forgetting her hat, her gloves, etc, so that she can return to the operating theatre with some excuse again and again— that she starts liking electric light. Up to the time when Mrs. Daldry is treated with the vibrator, her husband has managed to control her. In contrast to the feeble woman we see the first time, Mr. Daldry describes her as a little rebel: a woman who likes to get cold, who likes walking around without an umbrella (15-16), basically, a woman who wants to be free in regards to her own body. The vibrator, a symbol of power and knowledge, has more positive effects than the male characters could have imagined. To begin with, Mrs. Daldry rewrites the government love story she shares with her husband. According to Sternberg, one is embarked in a government love story, which is autocratic, when one partner dominates over the other (2007b); exactly as we have seen it is the Daldrys’ case. Mrs. Daldry’s statement that her husband “wants me to be in a certain way” (12) signifies her subjected position: her husband orders and she has to obey. With her awakening, Mrs. Daldry is able to question what she expects from love, as seen in the following dialogue:

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Mrs. Daldry’s early dreams of love already placed her in a learned and traditional subject position, being surrounded and lifted up, that is, protected and controlled by her lover, but in a peaceful way. She realizes that in marriage she has not found rest, and that being held up is insubstantial. The experiences she has had with the vibrator have helped her see that she has not had a love relationship with her husband, and the treatment, which was her husband and the doctor’s decision, has also shown her other possibilities: the pleasure of having a relationship with someone or something other than her husband. Furthermore, the idea that love is like “resting on water” is an explicit reference to sexual fluids, the ones she discovers with the vibrator. Thanks to the vibrator experience Mrs. Daldry starts a different love story, for which she draws a new love triangle. When the vibrator fails, Doctor Givings asks his midwife, Annie, to try the manual treatment. Mrs. Daldry ejaculates for the first time in her life—finding the water she had dreamed love to be. Little by little, she starts forming a new love triangle with Annie. Annie helps her sleep (20), they go for walks together (35), and talk about philosophy and the Classics (31, 76). As in a traditional courting scene, we see that these two women are falling in love. This is confirmed when Mrs. Daldry, while being treated with the vibrator by Dr. Givings, shouts “Oh, Annie!” (35) as she orgasms, and when these two women eventually kiss while playing the piano; an ability Mrs. Daldry regains once she is taking control of herself and she is the one to write her own love story. Nevertheless, Sarah Ruhl does not take this relationship any further, probably because it would completely demolish the comic and realistic form of the play. Mrs. Daldry, however, readjusts her love triangle with her husband by ruminating over the idea of getting a vibrator for domestic use. She says to Annie: I wonder whether I could purchase one of these instruments for home use. The doctor is busy, and I really feel I’m almost better. My color has returned, and I wake up in the morning and feel hopeful. I could use it only as required, when, for example, I have trouble sleeping, as I often do, (76)

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and Annie promises she will ask the doctor. Actually, “the vibrator began to be marketed as a home appliance” in the first two decades of the 20th century” (Maines 19). Thus, while Mrs. Daldry’s love story is closed in a quasi-realistic way, apparently respectful of gender rules, since Mrs. Daldry returns to her husband, Ruhl makes clear that Mrs. Daldry has completely changed after her treatment: she has become an agent and decided to use the vibrator as the source of intimacy and passion, which her husband does not provide her with, in her triangular love. While Ruhl solves Mrs. Daldry’s problem in this quasi-realistic way, Mrs. Givings’ case is a bit more complex. She has to re-write her love story, defined earlier as a sacrifice one, and her defective triangular love. As the loving wife she is, she has learned to please her husband, verbally affirming her husband’s statement “we’re healthy and happy,” but, as the stage direction says, she says so “automatically” (24), not really convinced. While she struggles to be the angel of the house, two facts reveal that she is not and cannot play that role any longer. Firstly, because she feels as a failed mother when she cannot breast-feed her baby and is forced to accept a wet nurse, an African American woman called Elizabeth. Secondly, because she is explicitly described as a “fallen angel.” Exceptionally defying her husband’s orders to stay at home and take a nap, Mrs. Givings does what she loves most: going outside and getting wet, a very clear reference to the passionless state of her love story. Leo Irving, who is another of Dr. Givings’ patients, finds her “making snow angels ... You looked like a fallen angel,” to what Mrs. Givings replies, “Did I? Oh! I am cold, but the cold feels marvelous, I feel awake, my skin is tingling” (61). Mrs. Givings feels alive by being outside her home, or, as James Al-Shamma has put it, “the snow invigorates [her]” (159), reviving at the same time the image on which she had based her love story. In a conversation with her husband she recalls that When I first met you and was nothing more than a girl I wrote my name in the snow outside your window—I would have done anything for you to notice me—you were older, and seemed so wise, so calm—and so marvelously indifferent to me. I don’t know if you ever saw it—it melted—no matter, if you saw my name in the snow all you’d see was a natural substance —. (59-60)

In this fragment one realizes the passionate love that Mrs. Givings felt for her husband at the beginning of their relationship; she wanted to melt with him as her name did in the snow. But as she realizes, her husband and her are completely different; as he is a scientist he cannot comprehend love in the way his wife does. By presenting herself as a fallen angel in the

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previously quoted scene, besides rejecting the imposed role of the angel of the house, she is trying to make her husband realize that they need a change in their love story, a return to their roots. A key difference to understand the various ways in which Mrs. Daldry and Mrs. Givings re-write their love stories relies on the fact that the Givings had a consummate love at the beginning of their relationship, the kind of love Mrs. Givings wants to rebuild. In keeping with the light and darkness binary of the play, in the following scene the two women discuss electric light vs. candle light. While Mrs. Daldry enjoys more and more electric light—since it is thanks to electricity that she can have a vibrator to close the love triangle formed by the Daldrys —, Mrs. Givings insists: Oh, to think of never carrying a candle! Not to walk through a hallway, holding a candle, afraid of tripping in the dark, starting a fire, it makes one more solemn, do you not think? Or to blow out a candle- how beautiful! With one’s breath, to extinguish the light! ... On, off, on off! We could change our minds a dozen times a second! On, off, on off! We shall be like gods! (39)

Mrs. Givings loves the romantic notion of candlelight, a romantic notion that also relies on stability. She does not want to make a big change, as Mrs. Daldry is more than willing to do as she assures herself the passion she does not have in her marriage by turning on and off the vibrator, but to recuperate the romantic love she had with her husband, a romantic love made of lovers’ tender breath. Nevertheless, it is also thanks to the vibrator that Mrs. Givings enters the domain of knowledge, and in order to do so she needs to form a triangle not only with the vibrator, but, in a comic revision of the concept of female bonding, also with Mrs. Daldry. Unable to escape her own curiosity, above all after listening to the cries of joy her husbands’ patients produce in the operating room and the smiles on their faces when they leave, and even though Dr. Givings always closes the door to his room to avoid his wife’s entrance into the world of knowledge, Mrs. Givings convinces Mrs. Daldry to use the vibrator on her. After climaxing, Mrs. Givings affirms that “that was very awful—it was a very dreadful strange feeling. I see why he has been keeping it from me” (40), a description that suits more what a True Woman has to say than what Mrs. Givings actually feels. Indeed, it is evident that Mrs. Givings has just said what she is expected to say rather than what she actually feels because right after describing her experience in such negative terms, she asks Mrs. Daldry “Would you like a go-?” (40). Therefore, it was not so awful and dreadful as she had said. More daring than Mrs. Daldry, subsequently Mrs. Givings

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tries to include passion in her triangular love and close the love triangle with her husband with the vibrator. As Mrs. Givings says to her husband, one of their problems is that “you pat on the head” (57), a complaint with which Mrs. Givings evidences how tired she is of being protected but not being paid serious attention, and, furthermore, that he is not able to “pat in the head and rub the stomach at the same time” (16). That is, given his androcentric view of sexuality, he is not able to make his wife orgasm. Indeed, when Dr. Givings is explaining to Mrs. Daldry the miracle the vibrator produces he uses exactly the same terms. In his words, to produce a paroxysm was much like a child’s game—trying to pat the head and rub the stomach at the same time—but thanks to this new electrical instrument we shall be done in a matter of minutes.5 (16)

After using the vibrator, Mrs. Givings understands that the thing that can bring one “back to life” is not “love,” but “Electricity” (53), hence the necessity to include the vibrator in her marriage. While Dr. Givings is reluctant to experiment on his wife, he submits to her implorations in the following scene: He holds the vibrator to her private parts, his face impassive. … DR. GIVINGS. Is that too much pressure? MRS. GIVINGS. No. Oh, Oh, Oh — Kiss me, darling, kiss me. DR. GIVINGS. Afterwards. MRS. GIVINGS. No, kiss me now. Kiss me and hold the instrument there, just there, at the same time. DR. GIVINGS. Darling, no—that would be— MRS. GIVINGS. I don’t care, do it, do it, I have been longing to kiss someone. Like this She kisses him passionately and puts the vibrator back on her private parts. (59)

As seen in this scene, Dr. Givings cannot leave his scientific role or understand this scene as one of love. Quite contrary, Mrs. Givings finds in this new triangle—wife, husband, vibrator—the solution to her empty love and the achievement of fatuous love (Sternberg 1986, 124), made of commitment and passion, with the aim of improving later the intimacy component. Dr. Givings, a purely scientific man, cannot but be appalled at

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the mere suggestion, as seen in this scene in his reluctance to kiss his wife while treating her, as he thinks he is doing, medically. While the doctor affirms that the experiment “was not a success” (59), his wife finds it successful, urging him to “Kiss me, kiss me now!” To her surprise, her husband kisses her “politely” (59), which she finds absolutely “inadequate” (59). To her, the experiment has been a success because it made her feel what she had never felt before: the revival of their passion. In order to find out that her love story and her triangular love can be rewritten without the vibrator, Mrs. Givings needs again to form a triangle with women. This time the triangle does not involve any electrical device; its components are Mrs. Daldry, Mrs. Givings, and Elizabeth, the African American wet nurse. Once Mrs. Daldry and Mrs. Givings have entered the domain of knowledge, which had implied their preliminary knowledge of their own sexuality, they have lots of questions and very few answers: MRS. GIVINGS. Elizabeth, before you leave— Perhaps you can settle a question. Mrs. Daldry and I have had two experiences of the very same event. Have you ever had this sensation? Either: you have shivers all over your body, and you feel like running, and your feet get very hot, as though you’re dancing on devil’s coals — MRS. DALDRY. Or you see unaccountable patterns of light, of electricity, under your eye-lids — And your heart races—and your legs feel very weak, as though you cannot walk. ... And sometimes a great outpouring of liquid, and the sheets are wet, only it is not an unpleasant sensation, but a little frightening? ELIZABETH. Is that a riddle? ... Does anything unite [the contradictory sensations]? MRS. GIVINGS. Many of them are—down below. ELIZABETH. Oh—I see ... sounds like sensations that women might have when they are having relations with their husbands. (70)

As revealed in this scene, the two white women are almost unable to articulate the feeling of orgasm; their entry into the world of knowledge is so new and unexpected that they do not have the vocabulary to explain this new feeling. In a stereotypical depiction of African American sexuality, Elizabeth is the one to answer: there is another view of sexuality beyond the androcentric one, one in which women also have sexual pleasure with their husbands. The two white women cannot believe this feeling can be achieved with their husbands and, consequently, form part of their triangular love. Indeed, Mrs. Daldry is happy that her husband is “considerate” and “tells her to shut her eyes” while he is causing “pain” to her and she lies “very still” (70). For Mrs. Daldry, the vibrator is a much

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better option, as it “produces a different kind of pain” (71), one that she likes and can control. On the other hand, while Mrs. Givings is amused that this can be achieved with one’s husband, she is enlightened by her African American wet nurse. The next step Mrs. Givings takes is to bring back intimacy into her triangular love story. Firstly, she tries to make her husband react by flirting with Leo Irving, but all she gets are scientific explanations for her behavior: “The treatment I gave you made you excitable. It is my fault. ... So why then jealousy? My darling, I don’t mind,” says the doctor. (63) Being aware that she can only make her husband understand that they need their intimacy back by speaking in those terms her husband grasps, Mrs. Givings tries scientific language: MRS. GIVINGS. You can go to the club. And argue about the benefits of the alternating current above the direct current. DR. GIVINGS. And you? Do you favor the alternating or the direct? MRS. GIVINGS. Direct. From here to here. She gestures from his heart to her heart. (74)

Although Dr. Givings does not seem to realize what his wife is talking about, she is saying that she would rather forget about including the vibrator, the alternating current, into their marriage, in order to find the direct way to re-build their love story together, as direct current works, from the husband’s heart to the wife’s, hence demanding his role in the intimacy and passion components. Given the comic nature of Sarah Ruhl’s play, the happy comic ending involves by definition the reconciliation of the Givings and, what is more, the successful re-writing of their love story. Sarah Ruhl makes Mrs. Givings convince her husband that they need to change the components of their triangular love in terms he can understand: MRS. GIVINGS. Love me for your job. ... I’ve heard that some women do not need the vibrating instrument to give them paroxysms, that relations with their husbands have much the same effect. Love me for your job. DOCTOR GIVINGS. I would like to love you. (83)

As implied in this scene, the blame of the couple’s lack of intimacy is placed on the doctor’s job. I agree with John Lahr that “There is no place for Catherine in the house, or in her husband’s imagination. He literally and figuratively can’t take her in” (2009). He is so busy and passionate regarding his scientific sphere that he has left his wife alone bearing the

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burdens of their faulty triangle and home, in the same way that he has forgotten about the necessity of nurturing passion and intimacy to maintain their love story. In the same way that Mrs. Givings and Mrs. Daldry could not find the words to describe their paroxysms, when asked in which way he loves his wife, the doctor answers “I do not have the words” (84), but at his wife’s insistence he articulates his love in the only language he masters, creating the long-searched intimacy his wife has been looking for DR. GIVINGS. (kissing tenderly each place as he names it—they are all on the face.) I bless thee: temporomandibular joint I bless thee: buccal artery and nerve I bless thee: depressor anguli oris I bless thee: zygomatic arch I bless thee: temporalis fascia. I bless thee, Catherine. Mrs. Givings cries, it is so intimate. (84)

Once the Givings have managed to bring back intimacy as a necessary component of their triangular love, Sarah Ruhl makes Mrs. Givings manage to include passion and change their love story from one of sacrifice to a gardening love story, which according to Sternberg defines relationships that “must be constantly nurtured. If partners ‘water’ their garden—tend to each other carefully—the relationship will succeed” (2007b). In the final scene, Mrs. Givings is given the leading role to bring passion back to her marriage; she orders her husband to “Open” her “In the garden” (85). Probably for the first time in her life, Mrs. Givings orders her husband to have sex, and what is more, to have sex outside, far from the suffocating structure of their house. Earlier in the play Mrs. Givings’ love for gardens had been suggested, and now she manages to occupy her territory to do what she wants, which implies a new assumed agency apart from stultifying traditional female roles. As the stage direction reads, while the domestic space seemed terribly permanent—a settee, a statuette— suddenly it disappears and we are in a sweet small winter garden. (85)

While for the most part the play is purely realistic, it is at the very end that Ruhl destroys the theatrical illusion. As she says, “no fourth wall, and things can transform in a moment” (qtd. in Lahr 2008). In this absolutely alienating scene in Brechtian terms, the artificial construction of the notion of home is revealed at the same time that the void love triangle that supported it is subverted. Mrs. Givings is undressed

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partially and the doctor is completely nude, allowing his wife to discover her husband’s naked body for the very first time. As John Lahr wrote for The New Yorker, it is in this scene that “the play moves from comedy of manner to vision,” defining this final scene as a “surreal and exquisite encounter” (2009). In keeping with the deconstruction of their home, traditional gender roles are also inverted. Mrs. Givings lies on top of her husband as they make the snow angel and have sex till Mrs. Givings orgasms as the lights go out (85-86). I agree with Heidi Schmidt that with this scene “Ruhl reminds us that the representation of gender is constructed, and as such can be subverted and altered” (670). Eventually, Sarah Ruhl makes Mrs. Givings achieve the kind of love she had longed for, and for which she needed her husband’s understanding. Both are fallen angels in the sense that they have to deviate from what were considered proper roles for man and woman inside marriage and have sex on the snow, a reminiscence of their former passion, as their bodies melt at the end of the play. I agree with James Al-Shamma that, This choice only enhanced the tenderness [in the doctor’s nudity in the snow] as an act of self-sacrifice to [the doctor’s] wife desires and to the fullness of their marriage, (159)

and that “as the doctor and [Mrs. Givings] redefine themselves, they also reconfigure the seemingly stable structure of their home” (143). Therefore, Sarah Ruhl shows that Mrs. Givings steps outside the center of the triangle and that together with the doctor they construct a new triangle with their consummate triangular love—all passion, commitment, and intimacy—as the third component to support their home. To conclude, in the face of the varied kinds of reviews that Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room has gathered, which range from “it doesn’t quite satisfy,” according to David Rooney in Variety (36), to Laurence Vittes’s point in the Hollywood Reporter that at least it tries “to train men” (8), I believe that this play guides spectators, men and women, in the difficult task of reconsidering our own love stories and the triangular love that supports them. Departing from reviews that claim that this is a historical play about Victorian gender roles, I think that the play satisfies above all in the portrayal of Mrs. Givings, a woman who, in the 1880s as today, dares to destroy the defective triangular love that artificially supported her home by becoming an agent in her own love story, thus forcing her husband to change his androcentric view of sexuality and creating, together with her enlightened husband, a solid love triangle that makes the old saying “Home is where your heart is” true. While the notion of female sexuality has changed enormously since Victorian times, and women got

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rid of the compulsory corset a long time ago, there are many other corsets, political, social, and economic, which form a triangle that still suffocates us and affects our love stories, as Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room should make us reconsider.

Works Cited Al-Shamma, James. Sarah Ruhl. A Critical Study of the Plays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Gainor, J. Ellen. Susan Glaspell in Context. American Theatre, Culture, and Politics 1915-1948. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Gardner, Elysa. “‘Next Room’ Will Elicit Paroxysms of Mirth, Sadness.” USA Today 20 Nov. 2009: 11. Gener, Randy. “Secret Life of Props (or the Vibrator Article.)” American Theatre (March 2009): 12-13. Lahr, John. “A Critic at Large. Surreal Life. The Plays of Sarah Ruhl.” The New Yorker. 17 March 2008. 11 March 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/03/17/080317crat_ atlarge_lahr . —. “Good Vibrations.” The New Yorker. 30 November 2009. 15 Oct 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2009/11/30/0911 30crth_theatre_lahr. Leslie, D. A. “Femininity, Post-Fordism, and the ‘New Traditionalism’” (1993). Space, Gender, Knowledge. Feminist Readings. Eds. Linda McDowell and Joanne P. Sharp. London: Arnold, 1997. 300-317. Maines, Rachel P. The Technology of Orgasm. “Hysteria”, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999. Orel, Gwen. “How I Write: Sarah Ruhl.” Writer 122.8 (August 2009): 66. Rooney, David. “In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play.” Variety 23-29 Nov 2009: 36-37. Ruhl, Sarah. In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. New York: Samuel French, 2010. Schmidt, Heidi. Review. In The Next Room, or The Vibrator Play. Theatre Journal 62.4 (2010): 669-670. Sternberg, Robert J. “Happily Ever After.” Tufts Magazine (Spring 2007). 20 Oct 2012. http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/spring2007/featur es/happily.html.

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—. “Stories We Love By.” Tufts Magazine (Spring 2007). 20 Oct 2012. http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/spring2007/features/stories.htm l. —. “A Triangular Theory of Love.” Psychological Review 93.2 (1986): 119-35. Vittes, Laurence. “In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play.” Hollywood Reporter 5 Oct 2010: 8. Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” Eds. Mary Beth Norton and Ruth M. Alexander. Major Problems in American Women’s History. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1996, 115-37.

APPENDIX A DE-FICTIONALIZING WOMEN WHO KILL CLAUDIA BARNETT MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY

When I teach “Women Who Kill,” a survey of American drama by women, I’m amazed at how easily most of my students sympathize with the murderesses, particularly when the plays are based on true stories, and real-life society ostracized these women. “We love Jo,” they say about a prostitute-turned-serial killer. “He had it coming,” they sing when a woman kills a man. When I ask how many side with Mrs. Wright in Trifles, more than half my students raise their hands. “She killed her husband because he killed her bird;” I play devil’s advocate. “But he killed her spirit,” they reply, nonplussed. “What if this were a court of law?” I ask. “Would you set Mrs. Wright free?” They might. Perhaps instead of hiring defense attorneys, murderers should hire playwrights to stage their stories. How have American women playwrights made female killers palatable and even admirable, and why do audiences respond so receptively? I’d been pondering this question for a while when I saw the call for papers on “the romance of theater,” and I was struck by the word romance: That’s what’s missing from these plays, with the exception of Chicago. With her “Jazz Slayer,” Roxy Hart, Maureen Watkins equates murder with glamour. But there’s nothing glamorous about Carson Kreitzer’s Self-defense, or Death of Some Salesmen. Or Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in This House. Or Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. Or Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. The characters in these plays include a boorish prostitute, two incestuous maids, a generic “young woman,” and a reclusive farmwife who’s never even seen. In spite of—or because of—these choices, the characters excite sympathy. In “Murder She Wrote: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles,” Linda Ben-Zvi explores the changes Glaspell made when adapting her 1900 Des Moines Daily News reportage into her 1916 Provincetown play.

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The historical Margaret Hossack became the fictional Mrs. Wright. Both killed their husbands in their sleep, but the similarities end there: Mrs. Hossack struck her husband violently with an axe, while Mrs. Wright strangled hers quietly with a noose; Mrs. Hossack lived a bustling life with nine children, while Mrs. Wright endured oppressive silence. In the courtroom, Mrs. Hossack made a poor impression: “Though past 50 years of age, she is tall and powerful and looks like she would be dangerous if aroused to the point of hatred” (Glaspell qtd. in Ben-Zvi 146). In the play, Glaspell signified Mrs. Wright with a homey kitchen and an empty rocker, leaving the audience to imagine a benign granny. By removing the blood and noise, and by rendering the woman invisible, Glaspell shifted the focus from her personal appearance to her universal despair. Sophie Treadwell made more drastic changes in her adaptation of Ruth Snyder to the Young Woman of Machinal (1928). “The plot is the story of a woman who murders her husband—an ordinary young woman, any woman,” writes Treadwell (173). The Young Woman, a.k.a. Helen, “is not homely and she is not pretty.” (Treadwell 177) Her one source of distinction is her “well kept hands” (Treadwell 177). She seems perfectly nice, not too bright, and quintessentially bland. Ruth Brown Snyder, in contrast, was interesting—at least her story was: She and her lover Judd Gray murdered her husband, Albert Snyder, in a bloody and bungled premeditated attack with a sash weight and picture wire. During the attack, Gray, “unable to carry on, called out ‘Help me, Momsie.’ And Momsie finished the job” (Jones 261). The police found a pin engraved with “J.G.” at the murder scene and matched the initials to Ruth Snyder’s address book to identify Judd Gray; in fact, the pin had belonged to Albert’s deceased fiancée Jessie Guischard, and he’d “carried it as a memento of his former sweetheart” (Jones 253)—a coincidence so unbelievable it could only be true. Treadwell excised these and other specifics, making her character into Everywoman. Helen is not Lady Macbeth, her lover is not a sniveling coward, and her husband is not a mean grudge pining for an old flame. Instead, all three are flawed and mundane, much like everyone in the audience—and it’s their ordinariness that sparks the murder. Ironically, one thing that was ordinary about Ruth Snyder was her fascination with Maurine Watkins’ Chicago. Snyder reportedly mimicked Roxie Hart when, “Before the trial Ruth precipitated a near riot by announcing, ‘Kill my husband? Why I wouldn’t hurt a fly” (qtd. in Kobler 51). Watkins interests me more than the play she wrote and then disavowed. Before penning her 1926 sensation, she worked as a journalist and covered the trials of the women on whom she based it. Chicago ran

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for 172 performances in New York, but after this dramatic success, she wouldn’t let the play become a musical: Her ... reluctance to release the rights to her play stemmed from ... a deepseated guilt that her witty Chicago Tribune articles had been responsible for the murderesses going free (Pauly vii, xiii).

She became a reporter again, when, in 1927, she covered the Snyder-Gray trial for the New York Telegram. This time, rather than attributing her bons mots to the murderess, she turned her scathing wit on her, calling Ruth Snyder “this marble woman” (26 Apr.), an “ice woman” (28 Apr.), and “a brave little self-made widow” (30 Apr.). She writes of both defendants: “Each claims loudly that he (or she) was influenced, dominated, magnetized by the other—a poor, weak, love slave; there’s a certain accusing irony in this spasm of modesty that prompts each to hail the other as the master mind, a hypnotic personality” (6 May). Watkins’ sparring with Snyder, whom many saw as the new Roxie Hart,1 blurs the lines between reality and fiction; Watkins sounds like a character in a play. Another odd blurring occurs in Carson Kreitzer’s Self-Defense, based on the story of Aileen Wuornos. As Wuornos awaited her execution, she became not only a familiar face but a cause célèbre, a scapegoat, and a character: the “first female serial killer” (Hart, Fatal 136). Fascinatingly, Kreitzer uses the same sources and even some of the same lines as Patty Jenkins’ film Monster (2003), yet the so-called serial killer in Self-Defense is not a monster at all; Kreitzer humanizes Wuornos with her own words. Likewise, in My Sister in This House, Wendy Kesselman transforms the infamous tale of Christine and Lea Papin, the maids who brutally murdered their female employers in Le Mans, France, in 1933, into a look at the lives of four women. The historical sisters were lauded as political heroines and as lesbian transgressors (Hart, “Maids” 132), and in literature and film they’re portrayed as sirens and symbols; in Kesselman’s play, however, they’re relatable human beings who disastrously break. Both of these playwrights have un-dramatized their subjects—if to dramatize means to exaggerate, to simplify, or to lie. What Glaspell’s, Treadwell’s, Kreitzer’s, and Kesselman’s plays share in common is that they’ve retrieved the killers from the headlines and, in essence, de-fictionalized them. How might audiences react to the actual women as opposed to the characters they became? In response to “We love Jo,” I started asking my students, “What if Wuornos were to walk through the door right now? Would you buy her a cup of coffee?” Their enthusiasm shrank. As I studied the ways the playwrights had adapted true stories, I found myself

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drawn by Watkins’ implicit realization of the power of theater: For better or for worse, we see things differently on the stage than in real life. Theater enhances our perspective: Like rose-colored glasses, it may add romance, or like truth goggles, it may illuminate pretense. It helps us see how someone could kill a man who killed her bird, or how someone could kill in self-defense seven times. It awakens sympathy and admiration for those we normally condemn or ignore. And it glamorizes evil. The danger of Chicago was that some women wanted to live there: Ruth Snyder killed her husband in a futile attempt to inhabit the play. Ironically, she inspired its polar opposite: Machinal is exactly how she would have hated to be seen. I began to reflect on how the historical women might view the plays they inspired, the plays that exonerate them. I considered their various attitudes—their anger and sadness, their hopes and regrets—as well as their desires. I started to hear their voices—distinct from their characters, distant from their crimes. Then I started to see them. I imagined a place where they all might meet, a bittersweet afterlife lacking punishment or promise, a cross between Kushner’s heaven and Sartre’s hell, a carnival where the games and prizes fit the crimes. The next thing I knew, I had written a play.

APPENDIX B HE KILLED MY BIRD, OR NOW THAT WE’RE IN HEAVEN CLAUDIA BARNETT MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY

He Killed My Bird, or Now That We’re in Heaven was written for the 4th International Conference of American Drama and Theater and had its first staged reading in Seville, Spain, on May 30, 2012. Lesley Ferris directed. Claus-Peter Neumann read stage directions. The cast was as follows: MARGE RUTH LEA LEE MAURINE VOICE

Sandra L. Richards Barbara Ozieblo Melissa Lee Patricia Schroeder Deborah R. Geis Claus-Peter Neumann

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He Killed My Bird, or Now that We’re in Heaven Characters MARGE Margaret Hossack, who, some time after midnight on December 2, 1900, struck her husband of 33 years twice on the head with an axe. She inspired Mrs. Wright (née Minnie Foster) in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916). “Though past 50 years of age, she is tall and powerful and looks like she would be dangerous if aroused to the point of hatred,” and/or she looks “worn and emaciated.” (Glaspell described her both ways in the Des Moines Daily News.) RUTH Ruth Brown Snyder, who, just after 2 am on March 20, 1927, with her lover Judd Gray, clubbed her husband with a sash weight and then strangled him with piano wire. She inspired Young Woman (Helen Jones) in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (1928). Slender and 32 years old, she is dressed fashionably for 1927. LEA Lea Papin, who, with her sister Christine, murdered their employers, Madame Lancelin and her daughter Isabel, in Le Mans, France, in 1933. The weapons included a pewter pitcher, a hammer, a knife, and the sisters’ bare hands. She inspired Lea Lutton in Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in this House (1980). A petite 21 year old, she looks younger and wears a tidy maid’s uniform and a pink cardigan sweater. LEE Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who shot and killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She inspired Jolene Palmer in Carson Kreitzer’s Self-Defense or, Death of Some Salesmen (2001). Thirty-five years old, she wears khakis and a camouflage t-shirt. MAURINE Maurine Watkins, who wrote Chicago (1926) and then regretted it. 40s-50s. She wears a veil that covers her face a badge that says “Visitor.” VOICE FROM ABOVE Male. Sexy. Off-stage (always). Setting A carnival: a duck-shooting game, a test-your-strength game (a hammer and a bell), a goldfish game (goldfish bowls lined up in rows; these have pebbles), a wall of balloons (for darts); in the background/darkness, a Ferris wheel.

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Note. The underlined lines come verbatim from source materials. At rise. Darkness. The sound of seven shots. Lights up on LEE, standing before the duck-shooting game, gun in hand. Seven ducks go by, each with a bullet hole in it. The ducks continue to revolve throughout the scene. Meanwhile, LEA sits on a bench, oblivious. SHE eats cotton candy. LEE (To the sky.) Wha’d I win this time? Another lousy bird? A tiny birdcage with a canary descends from above. Damn. Another lousy bird. I am sick to death of birds. VOICE FROM ABOVE Congratulations to our winner! Aileen Wuornos. LEE (To the sky.) Lee. Everyone calls me Lee. Like I told you yesterday and the day before. And the day before that. MARGE enters and plucks the birdcage from the air. MARGE I’ll take that. LEE Don’t you have enough birds, Marge? MARGE I love birds! LEE Then why don’t you win your own? MARGE I’ve never shot a gun.

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LEE That’s right; you’re an axe-murderer. MARGE Don’t be ridiculous. VOICE FROM ABOVE Step right up, ladies. Step right up and test your strength. LEE Our strength, huh? (To Marge.) That more your speed? Takes some serious muscle to hack someone’s head open. RUTH enters. Speak of the devil. Wanna test your strength, Brownie? Or’d ya finally figure out how strong you are? He was dead from the sash weight; you didn’t need the picture wire. RUTH I’ve told you a thousand times: I was in the next room, asleep. Talk to Judd Gray. LEE Can’t. He ain’t here. RUTH That’s because he’s guilty. LEE No, it’s ‘cause no one wrote a play about him. RUTH Same thing. MARGE And he’s a man.

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RUTH I miss men. LEE I am sick to death of men. MARGE You haven’t even seen a man in years. LEE Not long enough. (To Ruth.) If you like men so much, maybe you shouldn’t kill ‘em. RUTH I couldn’t possibly kill anyone. For I really have the tenderest heart in the world—wouldn’t hurt a worm … not even … a worm … MARGE Still thinks she’s Roxy Hart. RUTH Don’t I wish. But no, I’m an ordinary young woman, any woman. Just a face in the crowd. And dainty. RUTH picks up the hammer for the test-your-strength game and barely taps it on the base. It doesn’t register. SHE drops the hammer on the ground. LEA perks up when SHE hears the hammer. Dainty. Just look at my hands. I do have awful pretty hands.. RUTH holds out her hands. MARGE My lady’s hands! RUTH Seriously, who gives a damn about hands? LEA has finished her cotton candy. SHE throws the paper cone on the ground and approaches the test-your-strength game, not paying attention to

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the other women. SHE takes the hammer and whacks it against the base. A bell rings. VOICE FROM ABOVE Our second winner of the day: Lea Papin. LEA drops the hammer and looks up as a new cone of cotton candy descends from above. SHE takes it and starts to eat it as SHE wanders back to her bench. LEA (To the sky.) Merci. LEE (To the sky.) Hey! I told you: I wanna win that for her. Let her “mercy” me. No more birds. I am sick to death of birds. (To Lea.) Hey, sweetie. Don’t you want a canary? LEA ignores Lee. LEE cocks her gun and shoots seven ducks in a row. Sick to death of birds. VOICE FROM ABOVE Another winner! Aileen Wuornos: always a winner. LEE (To the sky.) That’s funny, asshole. You can keep your damn canary. MARGE I’ll take it! Another tiny birdcage with a canary descends from above. MARGE grabs it. LEE (To Marge.) What the hell you gonna do with all these birds?

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MARGE What I always do. SHE sets her two cages on the ground, opens the doors, then lifts the cages up. The birds fly away. Free ‘em. SHE tosses the empty cages away like trash. I always free ‘em. LEE What’s the point? MARGE What do you mean? LEE They’re birds. RUTH What happens when you free them? MARGE They live happily-ever-after, of course. RUTH Like us? MARGE Don’t be ridiculous. RUTH They all look the same. Don’t they? Maybe they’re the same birds every day. Maybe they just fly back to their cages. These cages disappear each night. MARGE They couldn’t be the same birds. That’s impossible.

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RUTH Nothing’s impossible. LEE She has a point. MARGE This place is beginning to wear me down. RUTH What a bore. VOICE FROM ABOVE Step right up, ladies. Step right up and see who’ll ride the Ferris wheel. MARGE The what? LEE Ferris wheel. RUTH He has such a sexy voice. The Ferris wheel lights up and carnival music plays. MARGE Where’d that come from? Has that always been here? LEA gets up and approaches the Ferris wheel. MAURINE appears sitting in a gondola. The music stops. RUTH I’ll go for a ride. Where will it take me? LEE It’s a wheel. You’d be like a hamster goin’ ‘round and ‘round. MARGE Are you sure?

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RUTH What a bore. LEA Christine? MAURINE alights from the car. RUTH New blood! LEA Du sang? MARGE (To Maurine.) Who’d you kill? Was it a man? Did he deserve it? RUTH They always deserve it. I never hear of a man’s bein’ killed but I know he got just what was comin’ to him … LEE Hey, give her a minute to acclimate, get her bearings. Maybe you could try “hello” first. (To Maurine.) Hello. (To Lea.) Is this who you been waiting for? LEA Christine? SHE waits and watches Maurine stand and brush herself off. Then, to no one: Non. Pas Christine. SHE returns to her bench.

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MAURINE Am I in the right place? Mmmm. The air smells like sugar. LEE My name’s Lee. Lee Wuornos. MAURINE Nice to meet you. LEE Nice to be met. And just to get this outta the way, yeah I killed seven men. They tried to kill me, so I killed them. Self-defense. RUTH Yet they found you guilty of murder. LEE They were a bunch of scumbag men. RUTH The victims or the jury? LEE Yeah. MAURINE Ruth Brown Snyder! You haven’t aged a day in … how many years? Seventy-five? RUTH How would I know? You think we have a calendar? MAURINE Don’t you know me? RUTH Well for one thing, I can’t see your face with that veil. Is that some sort of fashion statement? MAURINE I didn’t die young like you, Mrs. Snyder.

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MARGE (To Maurine.) Did someone write a play about you? I’ll be glad to see a new play. Ours are getting old. Even Lee’s. There’s just so many times you can watch her confess. LEE (Pointing to Maurine’s badge.) Check it out, ladies. “Visitor’s Pass.” She’s a rookie. MARGE So you never killed someone? MAURINE Might as well have, but no. Not directly. MARGE Indirectly. Who’d you kill? RUTH You can’t kill someone indirectly. You either whack him over the head or someone else does—and if someone else does it, you didn’t. I should know. Talk to Judd Gray. MAURINE Well, someone else did the whacking, but I wrote the play that made her do it. LEE You killed someone with a play? MARGE We don’t have a game for that. Just guns, hammers … pebbles. Who’d you kill? MAURINE Albert Snyder. RUTH Hey, what d’you mean?

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MARGE (Pointing to Ruth.) She killed Albert Snyder. RUTH Judd Gray killed Albert Snyder. MAURINE (To Ruth.) He started the job, but he was drunk and spineless. I’m sure you remember: “Help me, Momsie,” he said. And you helped him. RUTH Say, who do you think you are? MAURINE (Lifting her veil over her head.) You may not remember me, but I know you remember Roxy. RUTH Roxy Hart! MARGE She loves Roxy Hart. Talks about her all the time. Roxy this, Roxy that. Blah blah blah, Roxy. RUTH What I want to know is, why ain’t she here? I’ve always wanted to meet her. MARGE Well for one thing, she’s a fictional character. That means she doesn’t really exist. Which would make her hard to meet. RUTH Yeah but she’s based on someone real. Beulah Annan. She’s based on her a lot more closely than that sniveling Machinal dimwit is based on me. MARGE It’s better to be a fictional character. They can get away with murder. Especially if they’re sniveling dimwits. Even better if they’re off-stage.

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RUTH (To Maurine.) Do you know Beulah? Where is she? MAURINE She’s not here? RUTH Beulah? Nope. I’ve never seen her. MAURINE Well that’s something. That’s a relief. That was my greatest fear, that I’d sent her to Heaven. RUTH What’s she to you? MAURINE I wrote Chicago. RUTH Maurine Watkins. You witch. After you wrote Chicago, you wrote those editorials about me. The New York Telegram. Seventeen days! MAURINE Penance. RUTH Seventeen days with your picture in the paper. Thanks to me. MAURINE It’s your picture in the paper that’s best remembered. (To the others.) Nothing in her life became her as the leaving it. A reporter snapped her photo in the chair. MARGE The electric chair? LEE Old Sparky.

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RUTH At least Sophie Treadwell had the decency to keep that scene off-stage. I’ll give her points for class even if she made me a dimwit. You, on the other hand, “Maurine Watkins, Playwright,” made me a Jezebel: “She is not abnormal, but supernormal, a monstrosity because she combines dangerously and in excess the most unlovely traits of her sex—coldness, selfishness and a certain brutal savagery.” MARGE (To Maurine.) You wrote that about Brownie? But you made Roxie look good. Why’d you make Brownie look bad? RUTH I wanted to be Roxy. MAURINE That’s why! Roxy was meant as a parody, not a role model. But you went and took Chicago as a life lesson. RUTH Lousy lesson. LEE (To Ruth.) You thought prison’d be singin’ and dancing’? RUTH This was before the musical version. MAURINE I never authorized a musical version. MARGE Even Heaven’s not singing and dancing. RUTH It looked like fun. Glamorous. Exciting. Exotic.

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MAURINE I don’t think anyone made you a dimwit, Mrs. Snyder. Sophie was more than generous. MARGE (To Ruth.) At least she gave you good hands. I don’t even have hands. I’m invisible. MAURINE Invisible? MARGE In my play. Just a chair that rocks, but no one sits in it. Margaret Hossack. My friends call me Marge. RUTH What friends? MARGE So do these ladies. Susan Glaspell called me “Mrs. Wright.” MAURINE Mrs. Wright. Minnie Foster. … Margaret Hossack. Of course! I remember. Turn of the last century. That Iowa farm lady who clubbed her husband in the head, blood spattered everywhere, brain matter oozing from a five inch gash, his head crushed … MARGE Oh no. Nothing like that. I tied a rope around his neck. That’s all. MAURINE That’s what happened in Trifles but not in real life. MARGE Trifles is what matters. It’s all anybody knows. MAURINE I pictured someone more … bird-like. I’m guessing you didn’t have birds in real life.

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MARGE I had chickens. MAURINE Did you love them? MARGE Sure. With a potato and a carrot and lots of salt. LEE Sure loves birds now. Loves to free ‘em. MARGE Seems only fair since they freed me. I owe ‘em. Four and a half months of trial, telling my whole life to the jury and the papers, years of marital and family trouble, and no one cared one bit. Twenty minutes of Trifles on stage, and everyone’s on my side. In real life, John made my life hell for more than 30 years. No one cared. In my play, he killed my bird. That’s all it took to absolve me: one bird. MAURINE So Susan got you here. MARGE I know. I owe her, too, but I hold a grudge for her reportage. Made me look not only guilty but bovine. You writers should stick to plays. RUTH Hear, hear, sister. MARGE You’re mean when you write for the papers. MAURINE Susan regretted her reporting. I regret my play. LEE You regret Chicago? But everyone’s heard of Chicago. Even I heard of Chicago, and I never saw a play in my life. You can’t regret that kind of fame for something you did with your brain.

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MAURINE Never saw a play? LEE Not till I got here. MAURINE So that’s Heaven—seeing plays? MARGE Seeing our plays. Again and again. And carnival games. LEE She loves carnival games. MARGE Do you want to play a game? You don’t even need to buy tickets. Just step right up … MAURINE No offense, but I was expecting more. LEE Yeah, well, life’s a disappointment. Why not death? At least there’s no men. MARGE And it’s safe. RUTH I wish there was a man here to win me a giant teddy bear. All I ever win are goldfish bowls. A golf ball descends from above. RUTH takes it and tosses it into one of the goldfish bowls. VOICE FROM ABOVE Ruth Brown Snyder has won another fish bowl! RUTH takes the goldfish bowl with the golf ball in it.

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RUTH There’s no fish. Just pebbles. It’s a joke. I win a bowl full of pebbles each time. Don’t you think that’s funny? I don’t think that’s funny. RUTH hurls the goldfish bowl to the ground. The glass breaks, the golf ball bounces off, and the pebbles scatter everywhere. MAURINE This place is a dump. MARGE They clean it every night. MAURINE Who does? LEE Who knows? MAURINE You’re all here together, and you don’t even like each other. Then again, it would be hard to like any of you. (Referring to LEA.) Except maybe this girl. Who is she? RUTH She may look sweet, but she’s a psychopath. She’s French. MAURINE (To LEA.) French? Bonjour, mademoiselle. LEA (To MAURINE.) Bonjour, madame. Est-ce que vous connaissez Christine? MAURINE Who’s Christine?

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LEE She keeps asking for Christine. And eating cotton candy. She’s always hungry. MAURINE Why’s she here? LEA Madame Wendy Kesselman. Elle me fait sympathetique. MARGE Do you know her play? My Sister in This House. RUTH It’s about some Frenchies. MAURINE Don’t they have their own playwrights? MARGE Oh yes indeed. She and her sister, they’ve got a bunch of plays. Films, novels, the works. French, British, American. I’d bet that’s why they’ve split up: The sister’s in French Heaven. RUTH I wonder what that’s like. I’d bet it has men. MARGE They didn’t even kill men. They killed other women. They were maids, and they killed the ladies who employed them. With their bare hands. MAURINE (To Lea.) Vraiment? LEA We used our hands, yes. And a pewter pitcher. A knife and a hammer in real life, but not in the play. They tried to take me from Christine. LEE Self-defense. Right, baby?

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MAURINE But now you’re apart from Christine anyway. LEA C’est pas paradise. MAURINE That doesn’t seem fair. LEE Fair? Nothing’s fair. RUTH Well, you’d think Heaven’d be fair. MARGE But it is fair! It’s one big fair! A carnival! I love it here. I love prizes. MAURINE (To Marge.) I think I see why Susan kept you off-stage. VOICE FROM ABOVE Step right up, ladies. Step right up. MAURINE Who is that? MARGE It’s just a voice. MAURINE Whose voice? RUTH A sexy voice. VOICE FROM ABOVE Step right up and test your skill with darts.

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MARGE (To Maurine.) D’you want to play a game? You could win a bird. RUTH Yeah. You’d be good at darts. MAURINE You think so? RUTH Sure. That’s your specialty. Just aim and fire. A bundle of three darts descends from above and dangles near Maurine. MARGE If you burst the balloons, you win a prize. LEE You can’t help but win. MAURINE takes the darts and throws them at the balloon game. Every dart pops a balloon. VOICE FROM ABOVE Congratulations to our illustrious guest, Maurine Watkins. A candy apple descends from above. MAURINE Is that my prize? I hate candy apples. Stick to my teeth. LEE We all win things we hate. LEA races over and grabs the candy apple. Except Lea.

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MARGE I win birds. LEE I win birds. You just take them. You don’t even have a game. MARGE I don’t need one. I’m invisible. MAURINE That was invigorating. I’d like to try that again. Another bundle of darts appears. SHE takes them and throws them at the balloons, which pop. What fun! VOICE FROM ABOVE Congratulations again to Miss Watkins, a sharp shooter. An envelope descends from above and hangs in mid-air. MAURINE tears open the envelope and finds a card inside. SHE reads it aloud. MAURINE “Get out of Hell free”? Hell? I thought this was Heaven. The Ferris wheel lights up, and carnival music starts to play. LEE What’s the difference? RUTH This place is such a bore. MARGE But who would want to leave Heaven? MAURINE Well, I would. I have a play to write.

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MARGE Another play? A sequel to Chicago? MAURINE I have a theory: If a play can exonerate a killer, maybe it can damn her, too. RUTH Oh, no. The audience will always side with the murderess. MARGE It’s true. Even Medea has a fan club. LEE Why don’t you write about us? MARGE We could sing and dance. RUTH Just make sure we’re glamorous. If I have to be that ordinary dimwit for the rest of eternity … LEA S’il vous plaît, faites nous sympathetiques. LEE She doesn’t have to make us anything. No one made me anything. In my play, I’m not … What’s that word? LEA Sympathetique. LEE Yeah. I’m not that. I’m just as I always was. You know Self-defense by Carson Kreitzer? Well I’m just like Jo. That playwright didn’t change a thing. I’m vulgar, bossy, not too bright. Hopeful, gullible, trusting. RUTH Human.

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MARGE Honest. LEA Moral. LEE What? MAURINE (To Lee.) Apparently they like you. LEE That’s crazy. You said yourself it’d be hard to like any of us. MAURINE Well, maybe you’re not as crusty as you seem. Maybe they learned that from your play. LEE Well, we’ve all got plays that got us here. MARGE But like you said, yours sticks to the facts. LEA Le mien aussi. LEE What of it? I’ve got a movie makes me a monster. It sticks to the fact, too. MAURINE Spin is everything. RUTH Ain’t it. LEE Well I’m just sayin’: I wasn’t spun.

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MAURINE Then why’d you get off here but not on trial? LEE Scumbags. MAURINE Versus audiences? RUTH Audiences are more lenient than juries. MARGE Audiences want to see you kill. RUTH And juries want to see you die. MARGE Unless they’re a jury of your peers—but who gets that? The music gets faster and louder. MAURINE Well, ladies, this visit has been edifying. You’re all miserable, but you can’t do anything about it. Winning’s like losing, and heaven is hell. The only way you know to deal with your problems is murder—and everyone here’s already dead. RUTH It’s not the only way; it’s the best way. MAURINE And you don’t seem to learn from your mistakes. LEE Some of us had no choice. MARGE Or we thought we had no choice, which is the same thing.

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MAURINE It’s time for me to go. RUTH Say, why’d you come here in the first place? MAURINE Research. MARGE For your play? MAURINE No, this was personal. I wanted to see what happens after Purgatory. I got a day pass for good contrition. MARGE What’s it like there? RUTH Are there men? LEA Est-ce que Christine est là? MAURINE I haven’t seen her. Then again, it’s pretty crowded. You want to come see for yourself? LEA Oui, Madame. Yes very much. RUTH (To Lea.) You can’t just leave. MAURINE Sure she can. She can use my card. MAURINE hands LEA the card.

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LEA Merci, Madame. RUTH What about you? MAURINE I bought a round-trip ticket. (To Lea.) Come on. We’ll find your sister. MAURINE and LEA step into the gondola. RUTH Wait! Take me. I hate it here. MAURINE Not on your life. LEE (To Lea.) I hope you find her. The music intensifies, the lights go black on the Ferris wheel, and the music stops. RUTH Some chicks have all the luck. LEE I’ll miss her. RUTH You know she gouged out someone’s eyes. LEE Just one eye, and it was self-defense. RUTH You’re sweet on that girl.

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MARGE She is a sweet girl. Pretty in pink. RUTH Just like an audience to think so. LEE Why not? MARGE I’d like to play a game. LEE Why not? VOICE FROM ABOVE Step right up, ladies. Step right up … LEE aims her gun at the sky. Lights down. The sound of seven shots. End of Play

Works Consulted Ben-Zvi, Linda. “‘Murder, She Wrote’: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Theatre Journal 44 (1992): 141-162. Chicago. Directed by Rob Marshall. Miramax, 2002. DVD. Gillespie, L. Kay. Executed Women of the 20th and 21st Centuries. New York: University Press of America, 2009. Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. 1916. In Plays by American Women 1900-1930, edited by Judith E. Barlow, 70-86. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 1994. Hart, Lynda. Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. —. “‘They Don’t Even Look Like Maids Anymore’: Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in This House.” In Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre, edited by Lynda Hart, 131-146. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. Jenkins, Patty. Monster. Sony Pictures: 2004. Jones, Ann. Women Who Kill. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Kesselman, Wendy. My Sister in This House. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1980.

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Kobeler, John. The Trial of Ruth Snyder & Judd Gray. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1938. Kreitzer, Carson. Self-defense or, Death of Some Salesmen. New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2004. Lutes, Jean Marie. “Tears on Trial in the 1920s: Female Emotion and Style in Chicago and Machinal.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 30.2 (2011): 343-69. Pauly, Thomas H. Introduction to Chicago, by Maureen Watkins, vii-xxxii. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. Treadwell, Sophie. Machinal. 1928. In Plays by American Women 19001930, edited by Judith E. Barlow, 171-255. New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 1994. Watkins, Maurine. Chicago. 1926. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. —. Editorials about Ruth Snyder. New York Telegram, April 18-May 7, 1927.

CONTRIBUTORS

MIRIAM LÓPEZ-RODRIGUEZ teaches in the Department of English at the University of Málaga, Spain. She coordinates there the research group working on American Studies and was co-organizer of the international conferences on American theatre held in May 2000, 2004, 2009 and 2012. She has held a Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to study the Sophie Treadwell Papers at the University of Arizona. Dr. López-Rodríguez has co-edited the volumes Staging a Cultural Paradigm: The Political and the Personal in American Drama (PIE-Peter Lang, 2002), Women’s Contribution to Nineteenth-Century American Drama (Universitat de València, 2004) and Broadway Bravest Woman: Selected Writings by Sophie Treadwell (Southern Illinois University Press, 2006). She currently serves as Vice-Dean of the School of Humanities at her University. INMACULADA PINEDA-HERNANDEZ is a lecturer and Vice-Chair of the English Department at the University of Malaga, Spain. She has conducted research on Contemporary African American Fiction and Drama, particularly focusing on texts written by women. She has contributed several chapters in the book edited by Noelia Hernando-Real and Barbara Ozieblo, Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); also in Silvia Castro’s edited volume The Search for Wholeness and Diaspora Literacy in Contemporary African American Literature (Cambridge Scholars, 2011) or in Ignacio Palacios’s compilation Fifty Years of English Studies in Spain (Univ. Santiago Compostela, 2003). In addition, Pineda-Hernández has also published her research in Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies (2012), or in REN: Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos (2012). ALFONSO CEBALLOS MUÑOZ is a full time professor at the University of Cádiz, Spain, where he teaches American Drama and Poetry. His research interests are contemporary gay American drama and Queer and Gender studies. He is also co-editor of the volumes El teatro del género- El género del teatro. Las artes escénicas y la representación de la identidad sexual (Fundamentos, 2009), Violence in American Drama

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(McFarland, 2011) and participated in the volume The Neglected West. Contemporary Approaches to Western American Literature (PortalEducation, 2012) with the chapter: “Playing Tough, Queering the Myth: Cowboy Imagery in American Gay Culture and Drama.” He has also co-organized the American Drama and Theater International Conferences in 2009, held in Cádiz, and 2012 in Seville. José I. Badenes is Associate Professor of Spanish Studies and Comparative Literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. His areas of interest and expertise include 19th and 20th c. Spanish literature and comparative literature, gender and sexuality studies, and interdisciplinary studies. One of his current scholarly projects examines masculine gender performance in the works of Spaniard Federico García Lorca and American Tennessee Williams. He has widely presented and published in his areas of expertise, including some publications of his current work are “The Dramatization of Desire: Tennessee Williams and Federico García Lorca” in the Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2009; and “All About Mothers: Sacred Violence in Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and Tennessee Williams´ Suddenly, Last Summer in Text and Presentation 2012. [email protected] Claudia Barnett teaches modern drama, playwriting, and Women Who Kill at Middle Tennessee State University. Her plays have been developed and performed by MultiStages, Stage Left Theatre, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, and Venus Theatre, and have been included in the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival, and the 8th Annual Women’s Work Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her scholarship on contemporary playwrights has appeared in Modern Drama and TDR, and her book I Love You Terribly: Six Plays was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2012. [email protected] Nelson Barre is a PhD candidate at the National University of Ireland, Galway where his current research focuses on contemporary Irish theatre, memory, and performance. Some of his other work appears in New Hibernia Review and the Irish University Review. Nelson has also presented on topics ranging from politics in contemporary American musicals to ritual in the plays of Enda Walsh. [email protected]

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Ahmet Beúe is an Associate Professor of American Studies in English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Letters at Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey. He undertook work towards his PhD in Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at University of Toronto, and Royal Holloway and Bedford New College at University of London. He completed his thesis, Family and Dream of Success in American Theatre: Arthur Miller-Edward Albee, in 1995. He received Fulbright Scholarship grant and affiliated with Tisch School of the Arts and Multinational Institute of American Studies at New York University in 2006 and 2007. He has published: Monologue in Contemporary U.S. Drama: Exposing American Voices, and Introduction to American Dramatic Literature. [email protected] Jocelyn A. Brown, author of Color Blind Casting: Unblurring the Lines, is a writer and educator in the arts, particularly as they relate to African American issues. She has written numerous articles in the Arts and Entertainment field. Brown’s drama, Doors: Dramatic Dialogue Between and About Blacks and Whites, was awarded the outstanding new play of the year by a female writer in 1992 by the Zora Neale Hurston Workshop at the New Federal Theatre in New York City where it showcased in 1993. Dr. Brown is a member of the National Scholars Honor Society and the National Educators Association. [email protected] [email protected] Isabel Calderón-López is a full-time lecturer at the University of Cádiz (Spain), where she teaches English literature primarily. In 2002 she completed a Ph.D. on scepticism and epistemology in The Lady Falkland: Her Life and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. Her research and teaching interests lie in gender and genre in Renaissance and seventeenthcentury women’s writing, with particular emphasis on their involvement in drama. Her current research interest focuses on early modern conventual writing. She has published articles on Elizabeth Cary, Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Sidney, Mary Stuart, and Margaret Cavendish. [email protected] Virginia Dakari is a PhD candidate of American Theatre at the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she has also taught courses on drama and critical writing. She is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the staging of cancer in contemporary Western theater and performance. In 2010 she was awarded a scholarship by the Aristotle

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University Research Committee for her dissertation. She served on the organizing committee for "The Viewing of Politics and the Politics of Viewing: Theatre Challenges in the Age of Globalized Communities", the first international Theatre conference organized by the Department of American Studies, School of English, Aristotle University, and held in Thessaloniki in 2013. [email protected] Yiyi López Gándara holds two BAs in English and Hispanic Studies and a PhD in English from Universidad de Sevilla (Spain). Her primary specialization is the historical Avant-Garde, with particular interest on the poetics and politics of Surrealism, Expressionism and Futurism and their transnational connections. Between 2008 and 2012, she was a Research Fellow at the English Department of Universidad de Sevilla and, in 2013, she was awarded a grant to do an MA in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. Her current projects include the preparation of a Spanish edition of British Surrealist verse, the publication of a book on British Surrealist writing of the 1930s and a research project on literary collage in the European Avant-Garde. [email protected] Gary M. Grant (Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, M.A. University of Chicago, B.A. The College of the Holy Cross) Professor of Theatre at Bucknell University. He teaches courses in theatre history and dramatic literature, avant-garde performance, acting and applied and interactive theatre. Has toured productions of Sam Shepard plays to American College Theatre Festivals and won a US national award for outstanding direction. Published in Modern Drama and Les Paysages Du Cinema. Presented papers internationally on Shepard’s work and on the Freeing The Narrative Project, a musical theatre actor pedagogy that combines physical theatre training with historical research and psychotherapy sessions. [email protected] Nancy Grant (M. Ed. University of Pittsburgh, B.A. Immaculata College) is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the Psychological Services Department at Bucknell. She holds a certification in Positive Psychology and EMDR and is a member of the Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. Her primary interests include clinical applications of mindfulness and helping each student reach their goals for self-awareness and personal development through counseling.

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Christiane Desafy-Grignard is now retired and a member of The Arthur Miller Society. She was a lecturer in the English and American departments of The University of Paris X Nanterre. She holds a Master's degree on British Drama and a Doctorate on Arthur Miller from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne. Now she writes articles for university reviews or newspapers whenever a Miller's play or a book about him, is staged or published. She has published two books on Arthur Miller: Arthur Miller, La voix dérangeante. Paris: Berlin, 2001 and Arthur Miller, Une Vie à l'oeuvre. Michel Houdiard, 2003. [email protected] Noelia Hernando-Real is Associate Professor of English and American Literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and a researcher at the Benjamin Franklin Institute-Universidad de Alcalá (Research project: “Espacios, género e identidad en la literatura y las artes visuales norteamericanas: un enfoque transatlántico"). Recent publications include Self and Space in the Theater of Susan Glaspell (McFarland, 2011) and the co-edition of Performing Gender Violence. Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists with Barbara Ozieblo (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2012). Her research interests focus on contemporary North-American women playwrights and she has published articles and books chapters on Maria Irene Fornes, Marsha Norman, Jane Bowles, Caryl Churchill and Paula Vogel. Noelia Hernando-Real is Vice President of the International Susan Glaspell Society. [email protected] Ola Kraszpulska is the Assistant Professor of Scenic and Lighting Design at the State University of New York in Oswego. She earned her BFA in Theatre Production and Design at Marshall University, and her MFA in Scenic Design at Florida State University. Originally from Gdansk, Poland, Ola’s work often takes her abroad. She has twice attended the prestigious Prague Quadrennial, and was part of the 2007 USITT Study Tour through Serbia, Croatia and Monte Negro. She most recently presented her academic work at the IV International Conference of American Drama and Theatre in Seville, Spain. Ola is currently working on creating an exhibit focused on the blurred boundaries between theatre and performance art, which she is hoping to take to multiple venues. [email protected]

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Felicia Hardison Londré, Curators’ Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, currently serves as Dean of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre (Kennedy Center, Washington DC). She earned her B.A. in French, University of Montana (1998 Distinguished Alumna Award); M.A. in Romance Languages, University of Washington; and Ph.D., University of Wisconsin. Her fourteen books include The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, 1870-1929 (University of Missouri Press, 2007), winner of Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award. She is working on French and American theatre artists in World War I. [email protected] Joshua E. Polster is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies in Emerson College’s Department of Performing Arts and, after serving as President, is a standing member of the Arthur Miller Society Board of Directors. His books include the critical edition of Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays (2011), and Reinterpreting the Plays of Arthur Miller (2010). He is the author of several articles in scholarly journals and books on U.S. theatre. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award at Emerson College in 2010 and the Michael Quinn Writing Award from the University of Washington in 2006. Polster is a member of the American Society for Theatre Research and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. [email protected] Henry I. Schvey is Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to coming to Washington as Chair of the Performing Arts Department, he was a professor of English and American literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands for fourteen years. He is the author of Oskar Kokoschka: The Painter as Playwright, co-editor of New Essays on American Drama, and numerous essays on American and British drama. In addition to his scholarship, he is a director and playwright. His adaptation of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening will have its professional premiere in 2014, and he has recently completed a memoir, The Poison Tree. [email protected] María Ángeles Toda Iglesia is a full-time professor at the University of Seville and a member of the research group on North American Studies HUM488. Her areas of interest include North American Studies and the 19th century both in Britain and the U.S., with a special emphasis on the representation of gender and race in fiction, as well as on the relations of writers, critics and audiences in American literature. Her publications

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include works on late 19th century British adventure stories and homosexual writers, classic early American authors, and contemporary U.S. lesbian writers. She is also the Director of Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. [email protected]

NOTES

Introduction 1

Arranged by date of publication, some of these books are: Ozieblo, Barbara & López-Rodríguez, Miriam (eds.). Staging a Cultural Paradigm. The Political and the Personal in American Drama. Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2002. ISBN: 9789052019901. López-Rodríguez, Miriam & Narbona, Mª Dolores (eds.). Women’s Contribution to Nineteenth-Century American Theatre. Valencia: University of Valencia, 2004. ISBN: 9788437058702 Dickey, Jerry & López-Rodríguez, Miriam (eds.). Broadway’s Bravest Woman: Selected Writings of Sophie Treadwell. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780809326754 Ceballos-Muñoz, Alfonso & Romero-Espejo, Ramón (eds.). El Teatro del Género/ El Género del Teatro: Las Artes Escénicas y la Representación de la Identidad Sexual. Madrid: Fundamentos, 2009. ISBN: 9788424511944 Ceballos-Muñoz, Alfonso, Espejo Romero, Ramón & Muñoz-Martínez, Bernardo (eds.). Violence in American Drama. Essays on Its Staging, Meanings and Effects. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011. ISBN: 978078646390 Ozieblo, Barbara & Hernando-Real, Noelia (eds.). Performing Gender Violence. Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ISBN: 9780230339958

Chapter One 1 For biographical information on Judith Sargent Murray, see above all Skemp 1998 and 2009, as well as Harris 1995. 2 The other play was The Traveller Returned, performed only one year after Virtue Triumphant, in 1796. None of them attained commercial or critical success. 3 It is also true that Murray tried to conciliate her rebellious and pioneering demands for women, with support for orthodoxy, perhaps, to wedge the former. To Baym, Murray “presents us with the fascinating spectacle of a woman at once very much of her time and very much ahead of it” (v). 4 This and all subsequent citations from Virtue Triumphant are from Murray’s 1798 self-publication of The Gleaner (Vol III, nos. 70-75, pp. 15-87). 5 Skemp notes: “The state’s Puritan roots had a great deal to do with the hostility. But it was more than that. Countless people saw the theater as un-American, a threat to the very values upon which the new nation was erected” (2009, 250).

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However, as Jeffrey Richards contends, “[d]espite the presence of nationalist sentiment in playhouse audiences, spectators demanded new British plays ... even if slightly amended or cut so as not to offend republican sentiments” (87). 6 In Richards’ words, Murray borrowed from “Sheridan, Farquhar, Garrick, and other eighteenth-century playwrights” for the composition of Virtue Triumphant, in his opinion, “[a] pastiche of English dramatic forms (87). 7 Murray’s other play, The Traveller Returned, is also interesting in its treatment of the women theme. According to Richards, the play contains “female characters who run against type” (104); above all, Mrs. Montague, a woman who “reads inveterately, and not romances or sentimental novels, but science and philosophy. As Sharon Harris points out, “this image of a woman using her intellect on stage runs against the grain of eighteenth-century stage practice” (96). 8 On her own admission, prejudice was Murray’s hobby-horse: “I abhor the domination of prejudice, and, upon the strongest conviction, regard it as a tyrant” (Gleaner I 225).

Chapter Two 1

A tentative survey shows the presence of courses specifically centered on drama of the U.S. in Masters in American Studies (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Franklin Institute, and Universidad de Málaga). There are specific undergraduate courses in Salamanca, Valencia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Málaga, sometimes in combination with American poetry, as in Cádiz or Castilla-La Mancha. In some cases these courses are optional. Furthermore, the change from the traditional degree (Licenciatura) to the new model (Grado) has also meant the loss or reduction of such courses in Santiago or Universidad del País Vasco. Where drama appears in general survey courses on U.S. literature or on English-language drama, it is almost always in the form of twentieth-century plays. 2 It is ironic that in fact David Garrick, impersonated by the duke, was famous for his introduction of a more naturalistic acting style “that, in the words of his early biographer and sometime colleague, ‘threw a new light on elocution and action; he banished ranting, bombast and grimace; and restored nature, ease, simplicity, and genuine humour’.” (Burnim np), and that Edmund Kean, impersonated by the king, was as notorious for drunkenness and debauchery as he was famous for his acting (Thomson np) 3 Carlyon’s article is also a valuable source of images of nineteenth century circus flyers and playbills. 4 The Library of Congress web collection Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 offers recordings and video clips, as does Rick Easton’s webpage Vaudeville! A Dazzling Display of Heterogeneous Splendor. 5 Excellent-quality reproductions appear in Richardson.

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Chapter Four 1

©2008, revised 2013. *Portions of this paper appear in Color Blind Casting: Unblurring the Lines by Jocelyn A. Brown, PhD

Chapter Five 1 The Over There Theatre League had its organizational meeting at the Palace Theatre on 23 April 1918. E. H. Sothern and Winthrop Ames had toured American battleground areas in France and reported on the need for morale-building entertainment there. Hundreds of stage professionals volunteered to go, but the process of getting them across the Atlantic encountered delays, as transport of troops took priority in the limited available space on ships.

Chapter Six 1

The only study which has pointed slightly in this direction is Dennis G. Jerz’s Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950: Soul and Society in the Age of the Machine (2003). 2 The influence of Italian Futurism on American art has also been traced by John Oliver Hand in “Futurism in America 1909-1914” (1981) and by Dominic Ricciotti in “The Revolution in Urban Transport: Max Weber and Italian Futurism” (1984). 3 In spite of this, it is only recently that the interaction between technology and Modernism or the Avant-Garde has raised critical attention. See, for example, Sara Danius’s The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception and Aesthetics (2002), Günter Berghaus’s Futurism and the Technological Imagination (2009) and Alex Goody’s Technology, Literature and Culture (2011). 4 Paradoxically, the Italian Futurists were not represented at all in the Armory Show: a pamphlet issued by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors stated at the time that the Futurists were unable to exhibit due to “their engagements with European exhibitions” (35). As the pamphlet suggests, considerable confusion as to the categorization of the new European schools prevailed in America by the time of the Armory Show. 5 The influence of Futurism on Pound has been traced by Lawrence S. Rainey in “The Creation of the Avant-Garde: F. T. Marinetti and Ezra Pound” (1994).

Chapter Seven 1

The translation is mine.

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Chapter Nine 1

Eugene O’Neill’s romance with the theater lasted for 18 years, from 1925 (Desire under the Elms) to his death in 1943; Tennessee Williams’s lasted for 39 years, from 1944 (The Glass Menagerie) to his death in 1983; Arthur Miller’s lasted for 70 years, from 1935 (The Simon Trilogy) to 2005 Finishing the Picture, his very last play. 2 The Simon Trilogy is the name given to the three plays Miller wrote when he was a student at Ann Arbor University in Michigan in the 30s (see Works Cited). 3 The kept woman was a type of the Depression Years that Miller evoked in his play, A Memory of Two Mondays (1955). 4 Even if Paul of Tarsus’s letters to Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, are only ecclesiastical directives concerning the role Woman is allowed to play in the Church and are now considered by some as alterations of his words, mere forgeries used by the new Church authorities to subordinate woman, these directives derive however from Paul’s innermost hierarchical conception of the universe as he expressed in his Epistle to Corinthians (11: 3-9): “the head of Christ being God, the head of every man, is Christ, and the head of the woman is man /so/ man did not come from woman, but woman came from man (since Adam was first formed, and then, Eve), man was not created for woman but woman for man.” Similarly, in Paradise Lost, book IV, Milton establishes a difference between the two sexes which does not lie in its degree but in its essence: “for contemplation he, for softness she and sweet, attractive grace, he for God only, she for God in him” (verse 297-299). Freud was both a revolutionary psychoanalyst and a nineteenth-century conservative Viennese bourgeois. The two positions contradicted each other. As a scientist, Freud made advanced discoveries about women’s psyche and sexuality but shocked the patriarchal society of the second half of the nineteenth century. As a bourgeois, Freud was a man of his time: his wife, Martha, was a good housewife who “opposed change, received passively and added nothing of her own”, as he himself opposed “the women’s emancipation movement” ! It is also reported that Freud remained condescending in his judgments on women. However, paradoxically, the man was all his life, surrounded with women: first, in his parents’ family where he was his mother’s favorite and was raised with several sisters, and later, in his own family when he became the father of three daughters. Freud’s works raised much controversy among woman psychoanalysts: however, Helen Deutsch was the first woman to join his Psychoanalytic Society in 1918 and his own daughter, Anna, participated in advancing many of her father’s theories. 5 JosephValente. Rehearsing The Witch Trials: Gender Injustice in The Crucible. p.1 6 In the play, The Tyrones are O’Neill’s own Irish family: his father, his mother, his elder brother Jamie and himself. 7 There has been some interesting debate recently about the missing chair in the Lomans’ kitchen (The Arthur Miller Journal, Spring 2010: Daniel R. Bronson’s article “Three Chairs and a Trophy: reexamining the Familiar in Death of a

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Salesman” (62-67). Daniel Bronson rightly discards the suggestion that Linda, however downtrodden she may seem to a contemporary, feminist audience, waited every day on her husband and sons at the kitchen table. Bronson is right concerning Linda Loman, but he would not be if the play had taken place in deep France in the 40s where there were still wives who stood in attendance at table for their husbands and sons. More recently, I was told by a friend of mine (born in the late 50s) that when the salt and pepper were missing on the family table, her father would gently clink his glass with his knife and her mother (who was born Spanish) would immediately jump up from her seat and brought the salt and pepper with apologies. 8 Linda who has just reported that Biff “is too rough with girls and that all the mothers are afraid of him” is successively cut short through her speech, ignored for what she is saying and finally told by Willy to shut up. This reveals that Willy’s ways towards her had been already rude in the past (even at a time when things were not as difficult for him as they are now). 9 Car driving had a masculine and sexist connotation for a long time and female driving has been the butt of men’s sarcasm for many years; it diminished over the years but it still flares up occasionally, depending on the country. Cars had played an important part in the life of Willy as a salesman and also in the life of the family: simonizing their father’s car was almost a religious rite for Biff and Happy and the fact that Willy commits suicide by smashing his car is highly symbolical: it shows the dimension of his despair. 10 Beauvoir’s book was published in 1949 in France and in 1952 in the States where it became the ideological weapon of The Women’s Lib.

Chapter Ten 1 August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, in August Wilson Three Plays, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. All future citations from this play refer to this edition and will be indicated parenthetically in the text. 2 John J. Hanlon reads Toledo’s story related to leftovers of the colored man as Wilson’s description of the stew of slavery and the post-emancipation period. For further details see, John J. Hanlon, “‘Niggers got a Right to be Dissatisfied’: Postmodernism, Race, and Class in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” in Modern Drama 45/1 (Spring 2002): pp. 95-122. 3 Sticks and Bones resembles a very popular TV soap series of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” in the 1950s. See, for instance, Ulrich Mohr, “The ‘Reality’ of War: Rabe’s and Shepard’s Vietnam Dramas,” in Sixties Revisited: Culture, Society Politics, Munich: American Studies Series, v. 90, 2001, p. 270. 4 The word ‘Streamer’ comes to several meanings; in dictionary meaning it is a long narrow flag or a long narrow piece of colored paper; colored strip of paper, used to decorate knight’s helmet, or a place for celebration (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], p. 1284). In the play, “a streamer” refers to a parachute which fails to open, as Hertzbach explains

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“the thin ribbon of silk merely trails the hapless jumper as he [parachutist] plummets towards certain death. As he leaps out of the safe womb of the airplane, he is born, after a few moments, into a brief life governed by the terror of circumstance, the rule of irrationality, and the absence of alternatives to the destruction awaiting him.” See Janet S. Hertzbach, “The Plays of David Rabe: A World of Streamers,” in Essays on Contemporary American Drama, eds, Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim, Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1981, p. 173.

Chapter Eleven 1 The best-known play of that period that directly dealt with a woman’s brain cancer was George Emerson Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch’s Dark Victory, first staged on Broadway in 1934 with Tallulah Bankhead in the leading role. Despite the positive critical notices her performance received, the play itself was unsuccessful. However, it later attracted film producers and eventually made it to Hollywood in 1939 starring Bette Davis, whose acting garnered enthusiastic reviews. Susan E. Lederer, “Dark Victory: Cancer and Popular Hollywood Film;” Frank S. Nugent, “Bette Davis Scores New Honors in ‘Dark Victory.’“ The New York Times, April 21, 1939. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E03E7DE113CE73ABC4951DFB 2668382629EDE (accessed November 10, 2012). Perhaps the most popular and widely applauded representation of cancer as early as the middle of the twentieth century has been Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, its central themes being closeted homosexuality, mendacity, moral decay, the precarious passage from agrarianism to capitalism in the South, Not only did Williams talk about cancer and homosexuality in Cat but he scandalously implied an association of the two. In his imagination, the main character’s bowel cancer reflects “the predominantly negative attitude of 1950s American society towards homosexuality, often linking it with death and bowel cancer” (Prono 292). 2 An example that illustrates this point is Michael Cristofer’s The Shadow Box, which made its Broadway debut on March 31, 1977, ran for 315 performances, and won a Tony Award for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama the same year. In 1980 it was adapted for a television movie and was awarded the Golden Globe. The play brings together the stories of three terminally ill patients and their families and prompts a debate on human relationships in the face of death. Interestingly, the disease of the three patients is not specified, which points to modern medicine’s and modern society’s quietism regarding cancer (Sontag 5-9). 3 See Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly 18.2, part 1 (Summer 1966): 151-74. 4 Jim Farmer, Atlantan Margaret Edson’s Play Finally Heads to Broadway” GA Voice January 20, 2012; Ben Brantley, “Artifice as Armor in a Duel with Death,” The New York Times, January 2012. 5 See Cooper 27 and passim; Klaver passim; Vanhoutte passim.

Old Stories, New Readings

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6

Barbara Ehrenreich provides an illuminating account of what it means to be a breast cancer patient in the United States. Vexed with the “pink sticky sentiment” oozing from the pink-ribbon marketplace and its infantilizing trope of teddy bears and “ultrafeminine” paraphernalia, she states that “[p]ossibly the idea is that regression to a state of childlike dependency puts one in the best frame of mind” in order to endure long, toxic treatments. But what she believes to be the greatest danger behind this attitude that “in some versions of the prevailing gender ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood ...—certainly men diagnosed with prostate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars.” 7 Hughes and Roman, passim. 8 The play has been successfully staged, we are informed, in the service of breast cancer fundraising plans not only across the United States but also in France and the United Kingdom, with audiences embracing it everywhere. In fact, postperformance discussions with spectators who wished to share their own experiences and thoughts have been reported as profoundly engaging by the critics as well as Miller herself. These discussions seem to have been made part of the performance and performers other than Miller have adopted it (see Miller 2004, 73-75; Kerr).

Chapter Fifteen 1

The author is grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, research project “Discurso y representación del espacio como factor determinante, transformador y creador del cuerpo y de la identidad genérica en la literatura y el teatro anglo-norteamericano actuales” (FFI 2009- 12221), for providing financial support for the writing of this essay. 2 In her lecture “Male Triangular Patterns in American Drama,” given at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) on April 26th 2012 as part of the Modern Drama Seminar Series, Professor Linda Ben-Zvi convincingly argued her thesis that male triangular patterns are at the very core of such canonized plays as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Sam Shephard’s Buried Child. 3 The term “hysteria” stopped being used to define a disease in 1952, when the American Psychiatric Association decided to drop the term. 4 Sarah Ruhl acknowledges she is indebted to this book as a source of inspiration to write In the Next Room (7). 5 This is almost exactly the way in which Nathaniel Highmore defined the production of orgasm by vulvular massage in 1660. According to Highmore, the technique “is not unlike the game of boys in which they try to rub their stomachs with one hand and pat their heads with the other” (qtd. in Maines 4).

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Appendix A 1

Jean Marie Lutes cites this advertisement in the New York Times (5 May 1927): “Ruth Snyder Repudiates Murder Confession/Judd Gray Amid Sobs Brands Ruth As Instigator/See the parallel to the sensational Snyder murder trial/By Seeing/Francine Larrimore/in”Chicago”/A satirical comedy by Maurine Watkins” (quoted in Lutes 347).