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An Explication of Actors' Bodies in Ichor & the Four Humours Present

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An Explication of Actors' Bodies in Ichor & the Four Humours Present Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Research Papers Graduate School Fall 2010 Some Queer Bodies, Per Se: An Explication of Actors' Bodies in Ichor & The ourF Humours Present: Percy Per Se Himself Presenting: Fopulous! or All Is Vanity (A Tragicomedy of Manners in Five Acts with Narrated Interludes and Dancing) Bennett .P Whitaker Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp Recommended Citation Whitaker, Bennett .,P "Some Queer Bodies, Per Se: An Explication of Actors' Bodies in Ichor & The ourF Humours Present: Percy Per Se Himself Presenting: Fopulous! or All Is Vanity (A Tragicomedy of Manners in Five Acts with Narrated Interludes and Dancing)" (2010). Research Papers. Paper 38. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/38 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Papers by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOME QUEER BODIES, PER SE: AN EXPLICATION OF ACTORS' BODIES IN ICHOR & THE FOUR HUMOURS PRESENT: PERCY PER SE HIMSELF PRESENTING: FOPULOUS! OR ALL IS VANITY (A TRAGICOMEDY OF MANNERS IN FIVE ACTS WITH NARRATED INTERLUDES AND DANCING) by Bennett Whitaker B.A., Capital University, 2001 A.A.S., Columbus State Community College, 2004 A Research Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree Department of Speech Communication in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale December 2010 RESEARCH PAPER APPROVAL SOME QUEER BODIES, PER SE: AN EXPLICATION OF ACTORS' BODIES IN ICHOR & THE FOUR HUMOURS PRESENT: PERCY PER SE HIMSELF PRESENTING: FOPULOUS! OR ALL IS VANITY (A TRAGICOMEDY OF MANNERS IN FIVE ACTS WITH NARRATED INTERLUDES AND DANCING) By Bennett Whitaker A Research Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the field of Speech Communication Approved by: Ronald J. Pelias, Chair Elyse Pineau Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale May 14, 2010 AN ABSTRACT OF THE RESEARCH PAPER OF BENNETT WHITAKER, for the Master of Arts degree in SPEECH COMMUNICATION, presented on May 14, 2010, at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. TITLE: SOME QUEER BODIES, PER SE: AN EXPLICATION OF ACTORS' BODIES IN ICHOR & THE FOUR HUMOURS PRESENT: PERCY PER SE HIMSELF PRESENTING: FOPULOUS! OR ALL IS VANITY (A TRAGICOMEDY OF MANNERS IN FIVE ACTS WITH NARRATED INTERLUDES AND DANCING) MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Ronald J. Pelias This paper locates bodies' centrality to performance studies and interrogates those bodies present in one aesthetic performance, Fopulous , employing a queered version of David Graver's typification in "The Actor's Bodies." As Judith Butler's appreciation of performativity grounds bodies as acting agents that accomplish (re)citation of law that describes (hetero)normativity, bodies participate in their own (il)legible construction. Thus, considering Elyse Lamm Pineau's affirmation that performance methodology is an elucidating means of scholarly inquiry (and, as understanding the ways that performance communicates or en/acts is central to performance studies), investigating those aesthetic productions that prove fertile ground for body construction remains a vital manner of disciplinary praxis. Though Butler contends that aesthetic spaces are "de-realized" and therefore not suitable for evaluating body construction, given that aesthetic spaces are many performance scholars' "real" laboratories; that aesthetic spaces participate in the discursive construction of gender, and so must employ performatives; and that many aesthetic performances (e.g., autoethnography) blur lines between "aesthetic" and "real" worlds, aesthetic space becomes a valid testing ground for body construction. The world of Fopulous is one such aesthetic space. Fops and foppery accomplish effeminacy through extremity and ambiguity. Therefore, in order that it might be i performative (i.e., accomplishing what it names), Fopulous attempts to achieve the same. The show performs extremity by making interior spaces present and dividing audience attention among competing phenomena. It effects ambiguity by using shifting generic frames. Graver's typified bodies, with attendant interior, exterior, and autonomous worlds of meaning, become problematic as orienting schema when perceived through Butler's lens of performativity, as they reify a (hetero)normative paradigm. For, following Butler, interior and exterior are neither easily divisible nor causally related. Likewise, an illusion of autonomy must be sacrificed to subvert the (hetero)norm. Queering Graver's typification, therefore, requires foregrounding those bodies that accomplish extremity (a subversive repetition) or ambiguity (a break from repetition). Fopulous 's bodies do so: they demonstrate extremity by realizing both "hyperbolic stylishness" (Heilman) and abrupt, self-conscious transformation among different body types; they show ambiguity by simultaneously overlapping different bodies of the same actor and by blurring themselves to the paradoxical point of illegible presence. ii DEDICATIONS For Sharon and Dan iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank those who were instrumental in helping Fopulous to be realized on the Kleinau stage. Particularly, I am grateful to Jessie Stewart for her co- direction and extraordinary work behind the scenes and to Joseph Hassert for his technical direction. I also thank Southern Illinois University's Performance Studies faculty members for their kind support, approval, and encouragement. In addition, I wish to express my deep appreciation to those faculty members who have helped to guide both the show and this report. I am particularly grateful to Ronald J. Pelias, Elyse Lamm Pineau, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, and Jonathan M. Gray for being excellent models of scholarship, creativity, and discipline. I especially want to thank Elyse Pineau for also serving on my committee. Her incisive perspective has only made this work better. I thank Anne Fletcher for her careful, personal attention to and kind support of this work and for sharing her passion for the Restoration with me. Finally, I owe a great debt to Ronald J. Pelias, not only for advising me and agreeing to chair my committee, but also for instilling in me a love for the academy through his patience, enthusiasm, rigor, humor, and abundant compassion. Percy would like to thank himself. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT......................................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER ONE ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER TWO .............................................................................................................. 31 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 105 APPENDIX A................................................................................................................. 108 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................. 162 VITA............................................................................................................................... 175 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Graver's Bodies and their Attendant Interior and Exterior Worlds .................... 41 Table 2: Bennett and Percy's Character, Personage, and Performer Bodies..................... 61 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Fopulous Script Excerpt: "The Fop or the Author?"......................................... 26 Figure 2: Fopulous Script Excerpt: "She Reads from the Script"..................................... 82 vii 1 CHAPTER ONE Act The First: Orienting Performing Bodies Questions in performance studies often hinge on the body. Whether asserting a methodological argument, publishing performance research, or engaging aesthetic or mundane spaces' rhetorical implications, I find our field strewn with bodies—bodies everywhere. How are we to understand bodies' importance to our discipline's work? In what ways does the manner in which we typify, define, and experience different bodies affect the conclusions we observe in and through those bodies? In what ways might we begin to interrogate the discursive practices that make those bodies (un)intelligible? Performance studies scholars continue to wrestle over these issues. Given the importance of bodies, I am not surprised to discover many insightful and potent discussions already finding breath in the pages of our academic journals. Elyse Lamm Pineau calls performance scholars to have an eye to the body as our central means for methodological inquiry. As, "It is through their [performers/actors] performing bodies that questions are asked and upon their bodies that possible answers are written" (Pineau 49), those performing bodies on the stage bring to light issues explored in aesthetic space. "Performing bodies function
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