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Materialist-Feminist Criticism and Selected Plays Of MATERIALIST-FEMINIST CRITICISM AND SELECTED PLAYS OF SARAH DANIELS, LIZ LOCHHEAD, AND CLAIRE DOWIE. Julie Morrissy Submitted for the Ph.13 in English Literature, University of Sheffield. March 1994. Supervisor: Ms. Frances Gray 3 ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of the extent to which contemporary British plays written by women constitute an ideological theatre. It is based upon the premise that there is a relationship of feminist theatre practice to feminist theory, where theory is seen to have informed practice and practice has informed the theory. I argue that an ideological theatre can be understood with reference to first, playstructure and second, the place of the performer in relation to both character and spectator. The implications of these can be seen terms first, of representation and second, of the physical presence of the body of the performer on stage and are therefore seen to be to do with the representation of issues on stage and performance issues to do with the woman performer respectively. Using aspects of a materialist-feminist analysis I examine the ways in which feminist epistemology has brought about a transformation of social relations in so far as these are deployed through representation and specific processes of performance based upon the slogan "the personal is political". This involves looking at the influence of performance issues and acting, especially at power-relations as they are reproduced and represented in selected theatre exercises. Importantly, these strategies for reading are always seen in the context of modem British political theatre; the importance of this emerges through my proposition that an ideological theatre practice is one which both establishes and foregrounds a relationship or resistance to existing theatrical form or genres. This constitutes the first part of my thesis. The second part of the thesis is comprised of three case studies. In these I draw together aspects of representation and the processes of performance established in Part One as a way of understanding selected plays constructed in relation to existing genres. In Chapter Three I look at the plays of Sarah Daniels in relation to melodrama; in Chapter Four I look at the plays of Liz Lochhead in relation to adaptation. Chapter Five is my concluding chapter in which I stress the importance of both foregounding previous genres and questioning generic expectations by examining the interactions of theatre with stand-up comedy in the work of Claire Dowie. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the staff at the University Library at Sheffield for their help and advice during the time in which this thesis was written. I would also like to thank Dr. Sue Vice, Professor Philip Roberts, and, especially, my supervisor, Ms. Frances Gray for their encouragement, informed criticism and patience. Many thanks also to my parents, my sister Susan, Dr. Philip Cox, Neil Tully and Roger Shackle for their continued support. 5 CONTENTS PART ONE: Chapter One: BRITISH WOMEN'S THEATRE AS IDEOLOGICAL PRACTICE p.8. Materialist-feminism and theatre p.12. Feminists and British theatre: an historical account p.16. Finding a forum of debate p.21. The women's movement: staging criticism p.25. TRANSFORMATIONS: CLASS TO STATUS, MATERIALIST-FEMINISM AND SOCIAL RELATIONS p.29. Chapter Two: THEATRICAL STATUS AND GENDER: THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL p.42. In search of a feminist and political theatre p.42. Feminism and classic realism p.45. The spectator and narrative structures p.49. Revolutionary acts p.53. .. THE POWER GAMES OF THEATRE: INTRODUCING "STATUS" p.55. Status at the Royal Court p.58. Status and the playtext p.63. Status: an isolated unit of exchange p.67. "UNCONSCIOUSNESS RAISING": A REHEARSAL STRATEGY p.74. (i) Feminist drama therapy p.75. (ii) Augusto Boa!: politicizing the self p.77. (iii)Feminist strategies p.79. The single unit and the playtext Staging impersonations p.87. FEMINIST STRATEGIES OF STATUS EXCHANGE p.94. 6 PART TWO: Chapter Three: THE IMPULSE TO ACT OUT: SARAH DANIELS' THEATRE AS MELODRAMA Introduction p.109. Re-defining social realism p.111. Melodrama: public and private debates p.119. Masterpieces: a paradigm of feminist melodrama p.120. Issue-plays and affect p.128. Scenes of domestic melodrama p.133. Placing the lesbian subject in melodrama p.142. Performing the divided self: Beside Hersett p.143. Performing the double p.148. Chapter Four: MARGINAL THEATRES AND TEXTS: STRATEGIES OF ADAPTATION IN THE PLAYS OF J.TZ LOCHHEAD STRATEGIES OF ADAPTATION p.157. .. Finding a premise for adaptation p.160. Dracula: a test case p.162. "What happens at the end?" narrative strategies of disruption p.166. Framing ideology p.170. Uncanny doublings and the stage space p.174. THE MAID AS IDEOLOGICAL SUBJECT p.173. Blood and Ice p.181. Dracula p.190. Mthy Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Of) p.195. Parodying the quotable gesture p.201. 7 Chapter Five: FRAMING THE POLITICAL ACT AND GENRE: A CASE STUDY OF CLAIRE DOWIE: p.208. THE DUAL-DISCOURSE OF STATUS AND CLASS p.213. A feminist bildung p.214. Gender impersonations p.218. Staging fantasy p.221. A FAMILY NARRATIVE: CAUSAL RELATIONS p.225. Games and status: the rituals of childhood p.231. Absent bodies, status exchange p.234. NARRATIVE INTERVENTION AND THE UNSTABLE SUBJECT: Performer/character: Dowie's timely honesty p.238. Character acting p.240. The gaze, stand-up and theatre p.242. Suspense and heckling as narrative intervention p.249. (i) Expectation and suspense p.249. (ii) Heckling p.250. CONCLUSION: Re-assessing form and content: p.253. BIBLIOGRAPHY: p.257. 8 PART ONE: CHAPTER ONE: BRITISH WOMEN'S THEATRE AS IDEOLOGICAL PRACTICE In this thesis I examine issues related to the problem of defining the form that an ideological theatre will take both in terms of playstructure and the place of the performer in relation to both character and spectator. I explore the ways in which selected plays from the period 1978 to 1992 constitute an ideological theatre by looking at the ideological implications of different existing theatrical forms and their interactions with feminist and contemporary women's theatre.' My discussion is based upon the relationship of feminist theatre practice to feminist theory, where theory is seen to have informed practice and practice has informed the theory. This is a relationship which has its historical genesis in the important role, both private and public, women's theatre companies played during the most active years of the Women's Movement. During this time theatre represented a suitable platform for the exploration of theoretical concerns as well as being a platform upon which the voices of women were heard. I argue however that, in part, the genesis of a contemporary women's theatre practice has involved not simply the development of new theatrical forms but a process of both establishing and foregrounding a relationship or resistance to existing theatrical forms, or as I will describe them, genres. I use the term genre as a means of indicating the prominence of specific generic expectations and in so doing, as a means of exploring the several subject positions of spectator, character and performer. I would like to make reference here to a comparable study of the relationship between ideological theatre and genre by W.B.Worthen. Worthen describes the two aspects of theatre that of necessity must be considered in defining an ideological theatre: A given performance identifies an individual actor with the contours of a dramatic role, the dramatic scene with the geography of a given stage, the process of acting with the play's dramatic action. The rhetoric of the play's enactment strategically "identifies" the dramatic action with and through the theatrical activities of the stage. Political theater, in this sense, is distinctive only insofar as it foregrounds performance as an ideological process.2 9 Two key aspects of Worthern's commentary are relevant here. These are based in the assumption that not only must we study traditional issues of dramatic action and concerns located principally within the written text, but also we must study the performance strategies and signifying systems, of acting for instance. These he describes as the configurations of an ideological process. I would suggest that it is crucial in examining contemporary theatre to base that examination according to these two divisions, that is, between aspects of the written text and of the performance of that text. In my thesis I diverge from the premise of Worthen's work to discuss contemporary women's theatre as ideological, thus making the analysis of gender central to a discussion of ideological theatre. In the first part of the thesis, where I propose a new way of reading plays, I have divided the two chapters along these two principles. In Chapter One I consider the theoretical and epistemological conditions of recent British theatre that governed the development of an ideological or political theatre and provide the context for contemporary women's theatre. By situating women's theatre in its theatrical context and making comparisons with existing theatre and proposing cyclical developments I hope to show it not simply as a subgenre but as consituting various genres that are defined always in relation to existing ones. In Chapter Two my analysis is of staging and performance issues, an aspect of contemporary theatre criticism I suggest is crucial in undestanding the epistemological concerns raised in Chapter One. Whilst I move towards integrating the two areas in the second chapter it is in Part Two of the thesis that I develop that analysis more fully by making three particular case studies. Given that I am concerned specifically with contemporary women's theatre and the relationship between a literary and performance textual analysis I have chosen a materialist-feminist perspective.
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