Canadian Revisionist Drama: Performing Race, Sexuality, and the Cultural Imaginary

CANADIAN REVISIONIST DRAMA: PERFORMING RACE, SEXUALITY, AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINARY by Kailin Wright A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Kailin Wright, 2012 Canadian Revisionist Drama: Performing Race, Sexuality, and the Cultural Imaginary Kailin Wright Doctor of Philosophy Department of English, University of Toronto, 2012 Abstract My dissertation examines how Canadian revisionist plays adapt popular narratives—national histories, Greek myths, Shakespearean plays, and colonial legends—by changing the identities of marginalized characters and cultural groups. While Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation as repetition with difference, I define revisionist drama as repetition with politicized difference. It is this politicized difference that transforms the identifications of the original marginalized characters, and, as a result, changes their roles in the cultural imaginary. Canadian revisionist plays critique cultural figures such as Philomela, Othello, and Pocahontas as reductive emblems of necessarily complex, layered racial, sexual, and gendered identities. Though this dissertation concentrates on Canadian literature, it also considers European sources (Ovid, Homer, Shakespeare) as well as theories of historiography (Filewod, Salter), speech acts (Austin, Butler), audience reception (Bennett), and publics (Habermas, Warner). My project ultimately outlines a set of twelve literary and dramatic strategies that are repeatedly used to challenge popular conceptions of what it means to be Black, Aboriginal, Canadian, queer, and female. ii Revisionist adaptation is a leading form of political protest in contemporary Canadian theatre. With attention to eight playwrights—Margaret Atwood, Margaret Clarke, Marc Lescarbot, Monique Mojica, Daniel David Moses, Djanet Sears, Erin Shields, and the collective group Optative Theatrical Laboratories (OTL)—this study examines the shared methodologies of late twentieth-century revisionist dramas. While the first two chapters investigate strategies for identifying groups (“they are” and “we are”), the last two chapters examine self-identificatory utterances (“I am” and “I am not”). Through this twin focus, my project investigates the relationship between individual and collective identities and thereby captures the plays’ fundamental duality as they re-identify individual characters (Othello, Pocahontas, Penelope) in order to challenge collective cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes. While theorists such as Judith Butler, Michel Pêcheux, and José Esteban Muñoz conceive of identity in terms of performance, I invert this theoretical relationship by treating revisionist performance as a mode of identification and as a potentially powerful cultural vehicle for changing the way audiences conceive of and partake in cultural groups. Revisionist drama, I argue, performs disidentification by at once identifying with and against a source-text. This intrinsic doubleness—an embrace and rejection of the source—creates a politicized palimpsest in the minds of the viewers that forever layers the original with the revisionist version. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation was generously funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, an Editing Modernism in Canada doctoral stipend, a University of Toronto Fellowship, and a School of Graduate Studies Doctoral Completion Award. My supervisory committee was boundless in their support. Mary Nyquist went above and beyond in her honest, thoughtful, and meticulous appraisals of my work. Ric Knowles’s critical acumen and insightful questions have been invaluable. And Colin Hill has not only provided essential research opportunities and training but has also advised me in numerous ways over the course of this project. I also want to thank my examining committee, Robert McGill and Heather Murray, whose expertise and critical eyes will continue to push my thinking in new directions. I am especially grateful to Susan Bennett for the thorough and thoughtful examiners report, which, along with her influential work on theatre audiences and feminist theatre, will help shape the future of this project. For their assistance in the course of my research I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Alan Bewell, Dean Irvine, Magdalene Redekop, and Paul Stevens. I received valuable information from interviews and correspondence with Donovan King, Djanet Sears, and Erin Shields. I would also like to acknowledge my writing groups, colleagues, and friends. Jenny O’Kell was one of my fiercest supporters in the English Department with lattes and chocolate always at hand. Amanda Baker, Laurel Ryan, Jennifer McDermott, Tony Fong, and Spencer Morrison offered their keen editorial eyes. Laura Estill’s endless advice and early morning editing sessions have been iv constant sources of inspiration. Thanks also to Christina Garcia, Lauren Olsen, and Morgan Radford whose friendship feels more like kinship. Finally, I am grateful for my supportive Wright, Busch, Regan, and Relf families. My sister, with her indefatigable work ethic and encouragement, has kept me energized. Many thanks to my husband who has been a partner in all aspects of my life; his patience and good humour have seen me through every stage of this project. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Sheilagh Regan Busch and Fred Wright, who instilled in me the love of literature, theatre, and the arts. v Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction: Defining Canadian Revisionist Drama ................................................................. 1 Canadian Contexts: Transnational and Postcolonial Traditions? ................................................... 6 Literary Contexts: Adaptation Studies ..................................................................................................... 11 Revisionist Drama: Adaptation with Political and Politicized Difference ................................. 14 Charting Revisionist Adaptations on the Adaptation Continuum ................................................ 19 Figure 1: Hutcheon’s Continuum of Adaptations ...................................................................................... 21 Figure 2: Grid of Revisionist Adaptations .................................................................................................... 22 Twelve Strategies of Revisionist Drama: Process, Form, and Style ............................................. 24 Conclusion: Cultural Capital .......................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 1: “Theatre in Our Nation”: Performing (Post)Colonial Historiography in Le Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France and Sinking Neptune ....................................... 37 Le Théâtre de Neptune ..................................................................................................................................... 48 Sinking Neptune: Revisionist Theatre Historiography ...................................................................... 57 Narrowing the Gap?: Le Théâtre de Neptune and Sinking Neptune .............................................. 63 Chapter 2: “We are”: Performing Choric Counterpublics and Dispublics in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Erin Shields’s If We Were Birds ........................................... 66 Critical Contexts ................................................................................................................................................. 69 Collective Narration .......................................................................................................................................... 70 Performing Choric Counterpublics ............................................................................................................ 76 Opposition to Dominant Mythologies ....................................................................................................... 78 Resisting the Dominant Form: Text versus Performance ................................................................ 82 Alternative Discursive Methods: Bird Sounds and Parody ............................................................. 84 We(av)ing: The Poetics of the Choral “We” ............................................................................................ 89 Hostility and Indecorousness ....................................................................................................................... 95 The Theatre Audience as Dispublic ........................................................................................................... 96 Making Publics in the Theatre .................................................................................................................. 101 Chorus as Didactic Agent: Uniting the Inset and Real Audiences .............................................. 104 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................

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