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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Incorporeal Corpse: Disability, Liminality, Performance Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3h38d2hf Author Dorwart, Jason B. Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Incorporeal Corpse: Disability, Liminality, Performance A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre by Jason Dorwart Committee in charge: University of California, San Diego Professor Marianne McDonald, Chair Professor Julie Burelle Professor Michael Davidson Professor Nadine George-Graves Professor Brian Goldfarb University of California, Irvine Professor Anthony Kubiak 2017 © Jason Bogaard Dorwart, 2017 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Jason Bogaard Dorwart is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2017 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ……………………………………..….……………………………... iii Table of Contents ……………………………………………...……………………... iv Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………... v Vita .……………………………………………………………………….……...... viii Abstract of the Dissertation ..……………………………………………………...…. ix Introduction …………………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter One Controlling Disability: Representations of the Elephant Man ……………………….. 55 Chapter Two The Threat of Disability: The Empty Wheelchair as a Vehicle of Horror …..………. 110 Chapter Three Eliminating Disability: Freaks and American Horror Story ………………….….... 143 Chapter Four Reframing Disability: Live Performance and Countering the Incorporeal Corpse …. 187 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………...… 213 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………….… 220 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the entire faculty of the Drama and Theatre joint doctoral program at UC San Diego and UC Irvine for admitting me into this excellent program, and to the professors who directly guided me through the process of coursework with generosity: Drs. Stephen Barker, Jim Carmody, Nadine George-Graves, Ketu Katrak, Anthony Kubiak, Marianne McDonald, Ian Munro, Bryan Reynolds, John Rouse, Emily Roxworthy, and Janet Smarr. I am also grateful to have encountered the works and guidance of the remaining faculty members of the joint doctoral program: Drs. Julie Burelle, Daphne Lei, and Frank B. Wilderson, III. Thank you also to the professors outside my own department with whom I have had the good fortune to work: Drs. Brian Goldfarb and Michael Davidson, and Prof. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, My scholarship and thinking has grown significantly because of each and every one of them. I would also like to thank the UC San Diego Theatre & Dance staff and faculty from other disciplines who also helped shape my ideas and thinking about performance and disability: Dr. Ted Shank and Adele Edling Shank for entrusting me with the responsibility of being the first graduate student to serve as Lead Editor of TheatreForum ; Profs. Naomi Iizuka and Deborah Stein for their guidance in approaching the position; Prof. Kyle Donnelly for regarding me as a theatre scholar and practitioner; Marybeth Ward for her help navigating the graduate school landscape; Michael Francis for his work enabling I Was Never Alone to happen in the Shank Theatre; Prof. Todd Salovey for his teaching mentorship; Prof. Allan Havis for v his efforts in nominating me for several awards; and Laura Jimenez for making the teaching aspect of graduate school run so smoothly. I am eternally grateful for my dissertation committee: Julie Burelle, Michael Davidson, Brian Goldfarb, Nadine George-Graves, and Tony Kubiak for their guidance and countless letters of recommendations. Special thanks to my chair Marianne McDonald for her gentle encouragement, perfect amount of nudging and checking in, responding with edits faster than I have ever heard of any other advisor doing, willingness to learn all new subject matter, and general love and generosity. I am indebted to various others from around campus for creative opportunities, late night discussions, and the chance to try out new ideas: Sam Mitchell, Kate Jopson, Regan Linton, David Jacobi, Dr. Cassandra Hartblay, Louise Hickman, Andy Muehlhausen, Ben Fisher, Tom Patterson, Danvir Singh, Keith Wallace, Sharif Abu- Hamdeh, and my favorite roommate Danae McQueen. David Christopher Marty, thank you for sticking with me since college and for joining me in Malibu for my first post-spinal cord injury surfing adventure. Thank you to my cadre of doctoral students for their endless support, their assistance in fundraising for a new adapted van, and for welcoming me into this new home: Bryan White, Heather Ramey Konowal, Sonia Fernandez, Melissa Minniefee, Kara Raphaeli, Julie Burelle, Naysan Mojgani, Matthieu Chapman, Jim Short, Katie Turner, Lily Kelting, Alison Urban, Kristen Tregar, Jon Reimer, and Will Jones. I could never have accomplished this without the love and encouragement of my immediate and extended family: my parents Jack and Penni Dorwart; my sister vi Rachel Griffin; and my brothers Joey and Jonathan Dorwart. Also, to my service dog Rushmore, thank you for all the sticky situations you’ve gotten me out of. Lastly, to my marvelous wife Laura, thank you for putting up with me as I type late into the night. I may be getting a Ph.D., but without question, the best thing I am taking from UCSD is your love and companionship and our little baby on the way. Part of chapter four has previously been published in TheatreForum , is. 50, Winter/Spring 2017. Jason Dorwart was the sole author of this article. vii VITA 2002 Bachelor of Fine Arts Magna Cum Laude, Theatre, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska 2010 Juris Doctor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Denver, Colorado 2012 Master of Arts, Theatre, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 2017 Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS Dorwart, Jason. “I Was Never Alone : Translating Ethnography into Accessibility.” TheatreForum 50 (Winter/Spring 2017): 6-7. Dorwart, Jason, and Laura Oseland. “Frozen in Time and Fastforwarded: Roger Guenveur Smith’s Rodney King .” TheatreForum 47 (Summer/Fall 2015): 72- 77. Dorwart, Jason. “The Myth Project: Altar.” TheatreForum 44 (Winter/Spring 2014): 61-63. Dorwart, Jason. “Sticking it out when it Feels Impossible: One Actress’s Story.” Acting for the Stage: Succeeding as a Creative Professional . Ed. Anna Weinstein and Chris Qualls. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2017. viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Incorporeal Corpse: Disability, Liminality, Performance by Jason Bogaard Dorwart Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre University of California, San Diego, 2017 Professor Marianne McDonald, Chair The Incorporeal Corpse contends that the image of actual disabled bodies in film and theatre brings a visceral response that alters viewers’ perceptions of disability in unaccounted ways. I extrapolate Mitchell and Snyder’s idea of “narrative prosthesis” outward from their focus on written work, to my focus on the presence of disabled bodies in performance on stage and screen. I explore these issues as they pertain to the making of narrative-driven theatre and film, further theorizing connections between expectations of the disabled body and expectations of what ix performance should accomplish. Using Victor Turner’s ideas of liminality, I discuss how performances of disability place the disabled body into a liminal space between life and death, and that because performance is geared toward moving through liminality toward a new point of stasis, the performance of disability comes with expectations that it will be resolved into either recovery or death. The presence of disabled actors complicates the theatrical and cinematic processes because the material fact of disability’s existence both in and out of performance. Furthermore, non- disabled actors playing disabled characters reifies the recover/die expectation in that audience members find a sense of security in feeling that the disability has been overcome as the actor steps away from the role. I call this state of affairs the Incorporeal Corpse. To explore manifestations of the Incorporeal Corpse, I analyze Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan , historic representations of Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), horror films (such as The Changeling ) using images of empty wheelchair to postulate life and death bleeding into each other through disability, portrayals of the freak show in Freaks and American Horror Story , and recent theatrical performances (namely Cassandra Hartblay’s I Was Never Alone ) which focus on countering the incorporeal corpse. I ultimately argue that that conscious presence of actual disabled performers in the rehearsal room and on set challenges notions of disability as tragedy and begins to break apart the idea of disability as Incorporeal Corpse. x Better to be dead than live blind. — Sophocles, Oedipus the King Introduction A state worse