Performing Desire Jill Dolan and Stacy Wolf

Peggy Shaw, publicity poster for Must: The Inside Story. (Photo by Manuel Vason)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00393 by guest on 29 September 2021 Performing Desire Jill Dolan and Stacy Wolf

The trope of “desire” has long been generative in performance theory, especially to mark feminist and queer engagements with live art. Broadly configured as an entry into language through Lacanian paradigms; as an expression of yearning and sexual identification between spectator and performer; as a process of potential objectification but also of pleasurable liberation; and as a motivating force and process that was assigned a great deal of power from many critical and theoretical quarters, “desire” was, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the cornerstones of feminist and queer performance studies. But the marketplace of ideas the academy represents constantly renews and rewrites theory and, in that process, “desire” lost some of its originary power as a concept. We returned to it with this TDR Consortium issue because of our own attachment to its original promise, and because it continues to motivate our spectatorship, our scholarship, and our criticism. On a very basic level, our desire — to see performance; to experience ever new and transformative productions of musicals or plays, both new productions and ones we’ve seen before; to witness inno- vative theatrical objects with fascination, provocation, confusion, and delight; to appreciate how performance calls and thwarts our own very particular affective, intellectual, and political investments; and to understand how other spectators and publics make use of and experience performance — compels our engagements with performance. Our invitation to the authors whose essays are collected here was simple. We asked them to write about “desire” in whatever way that term now strikes them. This issue represents, as a result, an eclectic but powerful reminder of how desire, for these writers as well as for us, remains an optic through which we see, feel, and think about performance. Judith Hamera reads Osman Khan’s installation Come Hell or High Water, part of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s show (in)Habitation: A Reconsideration of Domesticity, as a synecdoche for a city she sees as “anti-desire,” because it is under water with debt and structural abandonment (Hamera 2014).

Jill Dolan is the Annan Professor of English, Professor of Theatre, and Director of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of many books and articles, including The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for Stage and Screen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre (University of Michigan Press, 2005). She has received a career achievement award from the American Society for Theatre Research, an outstanding teaching award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for her blog, The Feminist Spectator (www.TheFeministSpectator.com). [email protected].

Stacy Wolf is Professor of Theatre at Princeton University, directs the Princeton Arts Fellows. She is the author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (Oxford University Press, 2011) and A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (University of Michigan Press, 2002). She is the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical (Oxford University Press, 2011). [email protected].

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10 Dolan/Wolf fully andunpredictably, acrosstheembodimentsofperformance. new elasticitymakesushopefulforandcuriousabouthowdesire willcontinuetomorphuse- affect, andamovementbetweenamongbodiesinperformance, acrosstimeandspace. This cal languageintoamorefluid, resonantpractice, strategy, andtactic, aswellametaphor, an the Parthenon. ment intoandthroughthefriezesdepictinghomoerotics of menridingbarebackthatadorn scholarship andartpractice, describingherloveforhorse, Mylo, andreadingthatattach- vates theirworkingrelationshipandart. Finally, KimMarraextendspersonaldesireinto Omi OsunJonesperform, inlanguage, thewaystheirdesireas African American womenmoti- ball; andJonesinhisalter-ego, theglobalsuperstardivaJomamaJones. SharonBridgforthand tions ofdesireinrelationtotheirownperformancework:Margolinherplayaboutbasket- toured ittoNew York. DebMargolinandDaniel Alexander Jonesthinkthroughtheopera- Michigan mountedarevivalofherinfamousdykenoirradioplay, The Well, ofHorniness and on thetranshistoricaltransactionsofdesirepresentwhenherstudentsfromUniversity gram forwhichat-riskteenagedgirlsnarratetheirlivesinperformance;andHughesreporting sidering thecomplicatedexchangesof Austin-based RudeMechs’sGRRL Action, apro- as divasdefinedthroughthetropeofdesire. (2014:xx). DeborahParedezanalyzesmusicalperformancesbyLenaHorneandJudyGarland adulthood, adoptinginsteada “SCUM-my” child’splaytocultivatepoliticaldesireingirls of revolutionarypersona Valerie Solanasandassesswhattheycallher “defiant desire” tothwart performance andacrosstheaudience. MaryJo Watts andSara Warner ventureintothearchive tion ofgenderqueers, seesdesireexchangedthroughdifferentiterationsoftime, withinthe of PeggyShawpresentingheragingbutchlesbianbodyinperformanceforayoungergenera- formance seducesuswithflirtatiousintimacy. JaclynPryor, ontheotherhand, inherdiscussion ity” (2014:xx). Walsh looksatthreeverydifferentEuropeanperformancestosuggesthowper transgender artistCassilstobeginalargermeditationon “innovations indesireandtemporal- that theyreportasnearlyprivate. Wickstrom detailsherowncontactwithaperformancebythe between performerandspectator, chartingmorepersonal, intimateinteractionsinexchanges Maurya Wickstrom andFintan Walsh considerhowperformanceartbuildsacomplexdesire the 1990s” (2014:xx). in thelegibilityofgaymaledesirewithinmainstreamUSpopularperformanceduring detritus oftherecentgaypast,” thedolls “also scorethecartoonishlyabrupthistoricalturns argues that, “In theirquicktransformationfromhighlyvisibleobjectsofgaydesiretoforgotten sumption beforefinallybeinginterredasdebriswithinthearchiveofpopularculture.” Herrera “symbols ofwhimsicalresistance” that “went mainstreamascommoditiesofconspicuouscon- Tyson, threedollscreatedasgaymalecharacters, marketedinthe1990saswhatHerreracalls rience” (2014:xx). BrianHerreracontinuesthisthemeinhisdiscussionofBilly, Carlos, and the interplaybetweenproductionofadesiringsubjectandcommodificationexpe ering, astheywrite, the “signature Disneyperformance ronment onitsMainStreetasasitethatconstantlymanufacturesconsumeristdesires, consid- By contrast, SusanBennettandMarlisSchweitzerseeDisneyworld’s “brandscaped” retailenvi- Hamera, Judith. 2014. “Domestic(-ated) Desires, Tanked City.” TDR58, 4(T224):12–22. Bridgforth, Sharon, andOmiOsunJoniL. Jones. 2014. “Black Desire, Theatrical Jazz, andRiver See.” Bennett, Susan, andMarlisSchweitzer. 2014. “In the Window atDisney: A Lifetime ofBrandDesire.” TDR References Desire, inotherwords, nowseemsfreedfromtheconstrictions ofaparticulartheoreti- Sarah MyersandHollyHughesreaddesirethroughperformancepedagogy:con- Moving fromcitiesandobjectsofconsumptiontothephysicalbodiesliveperformers, 58, 4(T224):136–46. 58, 4(T224):23–31.

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(T224):32–45. (T224):147–57. (T224):68–79. Era.” 4 (T224):68–79. TDR 58, of Queer Desire.” (T224):56–67. Solanas’s .” Terisias “Desire and Kairos: Cassils’s 2014. Maurya. Wickstrom, Hughes, Holly. 2014. “Left Wanting.” “Left Wanting.” 2014. Holly. Hughes, 4 (T224):129–35. TDR 58, Jones.” Desire of Jomama “The Radiant 2014. Alexander. Daniel Jones, 4 (T224):126–28. TDR 58, and Desire.” “Basketball 2014. Deb. Margolin, 4 TDR 58, A Ride with the Parthenon Sculptures.” Aging Bareback: “Queer 2014. Kim. Marra, 4 TDR 58, Action.” Austin’s Grrl Excess and Desire in Tears: with Trouble “The 2014. Sarah. Myers, and Discipline in the Civil Rights Desire, Divas, “Lena Horne and Judy Garland: 2014. Deborah. Paredez, and the Present Future Trans/fer, of Acts Are in Must”: Peggy Shaw, “When Elephants 2014. Jaclyn. Pryor, 4 TDR 58, Whispering: Performing Intimacy in Public.” Flirting, “Touching, 2014. Fintan. Walsh, Valerie Act in Archival and Go Seek: Child’s Play as “Hide 2014. Watts. and Mary Jo Sara, Warner, 58, 4 4 TDR 58, 1990s.” in the Gay with Desire Toying or World, “Billy’s 2014. Brian Eugenio. Herrera, Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00393 by guest on 29 September 2021