Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Feminist Scholarship Review Women and Gender Resource Action Center Spring 1998 Feminist Scholarship Review: Women in Theater and Dance Katharine Power Trinity College Joshua Karter Trinity College Patricia Bunker Trinity College Susan Erickson Trinity College Marjorie Smith Trinity College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/femreview Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Power, Katharine; Karter, Joshua; Bunker, Patricia; Erickson, Susan; and Smith, Marjorie, "Feminist Scholarship Review: Women in Theater and Dance" (1998). Feminist Scholarship Review. 10. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/femreview/10 Peminist Scfiofarsliip CR§view Women in rrlieater ana(])ance Hartford, CT, Spring 1998 Peminist ScfioCarsfiip CJ?.§view Creator: Deborah Rose O'Neal Visiting Lecturer in the Writing Center Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut Editor: Kimberly Niadna Class of2000 Contributers: Katharine Power, Senior Lecturer ofTheater and Dance Joshua Kaner, Associate Professor of Theater and Dance Patricia Bunker, Reference Librarian Susan Erickson, Assistant to the Music and Media Services Librarian Marjorie Smith, Class of2000 Peminist Scfzo{a:rsnip 9.?eview is a project of the Trinity College Women's Center. For more information, call 1-860-297-2408 rr'a6fe of Contents Le.t ter Prom. the Editor . .. .. .... .. .... ....... pg. 1 Women Performing Women: The Body as Text ••.•....••..••••• 2 by Katharine Powe.r Only Trying to Move One Step Forward • •.•••.• • • ••• .• .• • ••• 5 by Marjorie Smith Approaches to the Gender Gap in Russian Theater .••••••••• 8 by Joshua Karter A Bibliography on Women in Theater and Dance ••••••••.••• 12 by Patricia Bunker Women in Dance: A Selected Videography .••• .•.... • ... •• . • 16 by Susan J. Erickson Spring 1998 Letter from the Editor: By examining the history of women in theater and dance, it is possible to see how this medium of art chronicles the change in women's roles in society. While in the past women's creative abilities have been repressed, we are gradually seeing a welcoming of expression, often through acting and movement. This collection of articles reveal that the shift is now towards the image of the woman who is in control-both of her body and her ability to create art. In this edition of the FSR, contributors provide insight on the history of women in dance, personal reflections, and the changing role ofwomen in the Russian !beater. In Women Performing Women, Katharine Power examines the way women express emotion through the use of movement and their bodies. Power's account of the history of women in dance discusses many of the innovations women have made in this field. Josh Karter, on the other hand, highlights the need for women playwrights and directors in Russian theater. Unlike American theater, women in the Russian theater are still struggling for greater prominence in their field. Finally, in a personal reflection, Mrujorie Smith reveals how she uses theater and play writing to convey her views of women in society. As the author of the annual freshmen orientation play, Mllljorie explains the way in which she chose to address and present a play on rape. Also included in this issue is a bibliography compiled by Patricia Bunker and a videography by Susan Erickson on women in theater and dance. Since my experience with the areas of theater and dance is fairly limited, I felt that this edition of the FSR could not only broaden my knowledge but also enlighten others. I hope that this collection of articles and reference materials adds to our understanding of the role of women in theater and dance. - J' ' ~v~ ~ l (· ~-·..... ;...,_.._ ..."':.. ~ 1 ... ,.-,, i \ r""J ' Kimberly M Niadna \ Women Pedorming Women: The Body as Text In an essay titled "Aller a Ia Mer," French feminist Helene Cixous condemns western theater as a patriarchal institution which serves to make women disappear .1 Patriarchal theater, she asserts, has historically relegated Woman "to repression, to the grave, the asylum., oblivion and silence." She is loved only when "abused or absent." Electra and Antigone are "eliminated." Ophelia is "banned and her soul violated;" Cordelia "asserts a femininity which refuses to be the mirror of her father's raving" and so must die. A dramatist herself, Cixous tells us she stopped going to the theater because it was like going to her own fun.eral; she encountered there not the stories of living women, but only her own violent absence. Rather than lend our complicity to a theater in which a woman has to die before the play can begin, Cixous calls for a new woman's theater, a theater which will make present she who has been absent: a theater in which woman's performing body will become the source of a radically new text. The process, she writes, will "take place where a woman's life takes place, where her life story is decided: inside her body, beginning with her blood." Cixous envisions woman performing body as a birthing event: "a body decoding and naming itself in one long slow push." By giving birth to her own theatrical presence, Cixous's performing woman stakes a claim to name herself. ..in one long slow push. Cixous' s essay (first published in 1977) is a call for a theater yet to be: "it is coming to pass," she writes, "this arrival of Woman into the world." But consider the following: At the tum of the 20th century, a Californian by the name oflsadora Duncan discarded the corset for a diaphanous Greek tunic and set out to create a new art-a new dance-based on the beauty of the female body in motion. She envisioned woman dancing as "the highest intelligence in the freest body." In 1916 Angelina Grimke wrote Rachel, a play about a young African American woman who, in her refusal to bear children, claimed her body as a site of resistance in a world of racist hatred and violence. At midcentury, choreographer Martha Graham fervently declared that "the body never lies"and with that manifesto, she constructed an elaborate theatrical language rooted in one basic motion: the dynamic contraction and release of the pelvis. Graham' s body text revealed an impassioned discourse of torment and ecstasy: a dialectic of woman's desire, urgently performed. ''The Owl Answers," a 1965 play by Adrienne Kennedy, follows an African American woman' s journey to London in search of her "dead white Father." Spinning through multiple identities for which she is ultimately condemned, Kennedy' s protagonist finally transforms herself from woman to Owl and thereby comes to embody the symbol of her own wisdom and darkness: her own ability to see (and signify) anew. Maria Irene Fornes, in the 1977 play Fefo and her Friends, provides an audAcious herione who dares to reveal what lies beneath the surface of Woman's smooth, dry, bodily exteriors: "a parallel life," she calls it "It's the.re. The way worms are underneath the stone. If you don't recognize it. ..It eats you." In the mid seventies, visual artist Carolee Schneemann, performing nude to a mostly female audience, extracted a narrow scroll from her vagina and proceeded to read from it. The scroll-a symbol of language, intellect, and history--suggested the advent of a new feminine text, a text birthed from vulvic space. Contemporary artist Pina Bausch stages large-scale dance theater pieces in which the female body is repeatedly subjected to acts of violence and abuse. In Gebirge, the audience must confront a woman on all fours, her dress pulled up so that a man can slash her bare back with red lipstick. And in the 1989 performance art piece Sally's Rape, Robbie MacCauley places herself on the auction block and challenges the audience to bid for her: the histroy of slavery inscribed on McCauley's female body, naked for all to see. By foregrounding the female body as the primary site of theatrical signification, the above examples (and there are numerous more) answer Cixous' s call for a theater based on woman's "living, breathing, speaking body." The new woman' s theater, so passionately envisioned by Cixous, in fact asserted itself long ago. Hrotsvita van Gandersheim, a 1Otb century nun, wrote plays about Christian virgins who successfully thwarted male violence and desire in order to preserve their bodies for Christ. The history of western theater includes a history of women performing women, authoring themselves as Subjects to speak of desire, rage, and celebration. Women perfonning women position themselves center stage to speak a new language--to birth a new text-and the story they tell is the story of body. by Katharine Power I. Cixous, Helene. "Aller a Ia Mer." Modem Drama Vol27, No.4 (December 1984). Only Trying to Move One Step Forward "Oh, how cute. A little feminist on our hands!" Father McCafferty responded in his oh­ so familiar domineering way. I was in Sixth grade Religion Class at a Catholic, parochial school. We had been asked to tell what profession we most admired and whether or not we wanted to choose that as our lifelong career. I had simply answered, "I could see myself becoming a priest one day." It was obvious by the way Father McCafferty reacted, and the manner in which he spoke, that not only would I never become a priest, but that being a 'feminist' wasn' t a very good thing to be. Confused, I asked him what the word meant. He chuckled. "A woman who tries to refuse her natural and proper subservient role." As ignorant and bad as Father made it sound, I knew right then and there that I liked being considered 'one of those.' So it all started in Catholic grade school.