The Mainstream Theatre of Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner As a Negotiating Force Between Emergent and Dominant Ideologies

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Profitable Dissents: The Mainstream Theatre of Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner as a Negotiating Force Between Emergent and Dominant Ideologies A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Theatre and Drama By Jacob M. Juntunen EVANSTON, ILLINOIS December 2007 2 Abstract Profitable Dissents: The Mainstream Theatre of Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner as a Negotiating Force Between Emergent and Dominant Ideologies Jacob M. Juntunen By combining cultural theory with empirical data, this dissertation asserts that late-twentieth- century mainstream theatre had the potential to support emergent ideologies in the U.S. context. The [MSOffice1]study finds fault with those who dismiss mainstream theatre based on its commercialism and shows how a production’s mainstream status may position its emergent ideology as conventional rather than radical. Much of this work is done through the media’s reception of productions, and this dissertation employs the media theory espoused by James Carey to suggest that newspapers do not transmit information as much as they report news [MSOffice2]with rhetorical strategies that confirm the ideologies of their readers. Ideology, here, is defined by the writings of Louis Althusser and Raymond Williams and is understood as an unconscious “frame” through which one sees the world. On the rare occasions that a periodical does transmit new information, readers tend to shift their ideologies accordingly. Using Ric Knowles’ materialist semiotics, this study analyzes three productions and their cultural surroundings—particularly newspaper reviews—to illustrate how they contributed to and changed the ideologies of spectators and readers. It reveals that while mainstream theatre may be part of the socializing force of Horkheimer and Adorno’s culture industry, one must nevertheless contextualize that socialization and ask whether it supports the dominant or an emergent ideology. 3 The analysis of this dissertation’s first case study, the 2001 New York Theatre Workshop production of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul, shows that historical context and media reception are of equal importance to textual content when evaluating a production’s ideological work. In the second case study, the 1985 Public Theatre production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, the emergent ideology was explicitly argued in the script and incorporated into the mainstream media, helping these ideas become part of the dominant ideology. Finally, the 1993 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, presented an emergent ideology, but because the production was framed as mainstream by its Broadway[MSOffice3] location and as high art by its critical reception, its emergent ideology was implicitly marked as conventional. These case studies show how mainstream theatre could support emergent ideologies in the late-twentieth-century U.S. context. 4 Acknowledgments Of course, credit is due to my committee: Tracy Davis, Jennifer Devere Brody, and Craig Kinzer. An early member of my committee, Susan Herbst, left for Temple University before the completion of this document, but not before she influenced my thoughts on the Frankfurt School and media studies. Lisa Merrill suggested I include the advertising of Homebody/Kabul in its analysis, and that led me to consider the reviews. Susan Manning suggested I view Homebody/Kabul in the first place, and Brianna Bertoglio recommended The Normal Heart and The Band Played On. My cohort, Shelly Scott and Sheila Moeschen got me through my first year; Northwestern’s Counseling and Psychological Services provided me with stellar and necessary care, particularly my fellow members of group therapy and Doctors Kelly Schilder Ray, Wei- Jen Huang, Pamela Hazard, and Janet Kirby. The MFAs were of great help later in my graduate school career. My students contributed a great deal to my thinking, especially those in Political Theatre, and Theory, Performance and Social Justice. Ben Sadock and Rachel Perkins put me up in New York a number of times when I was doing research. I am appreciative of the funding I received from Northwestern, particularly a Northwestern University Fellowship, a Graduate Research Grant, and a Diedrich and Johnson Scholarship. Stefka Mihalova read a draft of my introduction and provided helpful comments. Emily Rena-Dozier was a great help as a sympathetic ear at some of the lowest moments. Finally, Dan Smith provided repeated and invaluable suggestions and edits, particularly when I was reworking the chapter on Angels in America. 5 For Meghann Pytka it would probably remain unfinished without her 6 Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER TWO REPAIRING REALITY: MATERIALIST SEMIOTICS, THE MEDIA AND HOMEBODY/KABUL AFTER THE 2001 WORLD TRADE CENTER ATTACKS IN NEW YORK......................................... 43 CHAPTER THREE THE WRITING ON THE WALL: ALIENATION AND ACTIVISM IN JOSEPH PAPP’S 1985 PUBLIC THEATRE PRODUCTION OF LARRY KRAMER’S THE NORMAL HEART..................................... 128 CHAPTER FOUR IMAGINING NEW CITIZENS INTO A NATION:THE 1993 BROADWAY PREMIERE OF ANGELS IN AMERICA ............................................................................................................................................ 181 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION: MAINSTREAM THEATRE SUPPORTING EMERGENT IDEOLOGIES ................. 248 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................................................ 259 7 Chapter One Introduction The Will and Grace Question While teaching classes on the politics of performance at Northwestern University, I encountered an interesting problem: my students routinely discussed what we called “The Will and Grace Question.” Will and Grace was a popular television sitcom that ran from 1998 to 2006; Will is a gay lawyer who shares an apartment with a straight, interior designer, Grace. While Will is portrayed sympathetically and the audience is intended to empathize with him, the show often depicts homosexual characters stereotypically—especially Will’s flamboyant friend, Jack. My students asked whether this show harmed the gay rights movement through its caricatured portraits of gay men or helped by portraying gay people sympathetically in the mainstream. They enjoyed asking “The Will and Grace Question” about the plays we discussed. For example, what were the effects of Angels in America? Did its 1993 Broadway premiere help the emerging discourse of gay civil rights? Or did the play’s position in the profitable mainstream culture industry erase any of its radical politics? This dissertation posits answers to these difficult questions and demonstrates that mainstream theatre in the U.S. at the end of the twentieth century possessed the ability to support emergent ideologies. 8 In 1999, noted Professor of Drama Baz Kershaw articulated a crisis in contemporary theatre: modern capitalism bled theatre of its radical potential (Radical 5). To overcome theatre’s impotence, Kershaw proposed a turn to radical “performance beyond the theatre” to engage the tensions caused by “the conformity forced on cultural production by capitalist consumerism” (Radical 16). While Kershaw argued for the primacy of radical performance, Professor of Film and Drama John Bull implicitly critiqued his colleague’s over-determinism and recognized mainstream theatre’s centrality to the political process. Theatre, Bull argued, is not the site where emergent ideologies materialized. Instead, it is the mediator between the conventional and subversive—the place where the dominant culture has the ability “to take in, to assimilate, and to render more safe, more marketable, the products of any oppositional programme” (134). Despite his intelligent assessment, Kershaw fails to recognize mainstream theatre’s political value; that is, they overlook the process by which emergent ideologies are digested and taken up by those capable of shifting the dominant ideology and bringing about political change through institutional processes. My dissertation engages this argument and investigates mainstream theatre’s potential to contribute to the acceptance of emergent ideologies in the late-twentieth-century United States context. By analyzing one Broadway production and two off-Broadway productions, I document empirically how late-twentieth-century mainstream theatre supported emergent ideologies and show the ways mainstream theatre may still act as a 9 mediating force between emergent and dominant ideologies capable of influencing political change. To avoid the often obscure terminology used in cultural studies, a clear presentation of terms is crucial. The definition of “ideology” used throughout this dissertation is the one Louis Althusser maps out in “Marxism and Humanism” from For Marx. Ideology, according to Althusser, is an unconscious system of beliefs that is not a particular outlook on the world (which would be conscious), but, instead, an idea of the way the world is, a frame through which people view their worlds. (Althusser, For Marx 239-40). Suggesting that Althusser’s monolithic definition of ideology does not suitably explain how political change occurs, Raymond Williams separates ideology into three subcategories that are always present in society: dominant, residual,

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