Reinventing Performance, Reproducing Ideologies: Literary Models
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REINVENTING PERFORMANCE, REPRODUCING IDEOLOGIES: LITERARY MODELS OF AUTHORSHIP AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICES FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT by GEORGE JARRARD PATE (Under the Direction of Marla Carlson) ABSTRACT The 1960s ushered in a new era of theatrical experimentation and innovative performance practices, many founded upon rejecting the text as a central authority or guiding principle for production. At the same time, theorists were busy declaring the author dead. But the author refused to die quietly, and attempts to emancipate performance from texts have followed a complex and non-linear path. The purpose of this study is to examine how the concept of authorship as a cultural construction affects theater and performance practices from the 1960s to the present. Several key developments in the relationship between authorship and performance occur in this period, and these changes and their effects have yet to be fully explored. Two questions regarding authorship and theater guide my research. First, what role does authorship play in theater and performance since the 1960s? Second, what unique challenges do theater and performance present in this growing body of research about the relationship between theory, the law, and cultural production. Though the precise effects of this relationship vary among the different theater and performance genres I examine, a major theme appears repeatedly: theater practitioners’ rhetorical embrace of postmodern concepts such as the death of the author or espousal of anti-capitalist ideological commitments conflicting with their simultaneous engagement with modes of production ultimately aligned with an author-centric, hierarchical, capitalist ideology. I will argue that these conflicts result not from hypocrisy but from something much more complex: a series of contradictions and paradoxes built into legal and institutional systems that provide a place for resistant ideologies while simultaneously keeping them in check. Authorship occupies an ideologically privileged space as the default mode for cultural production. The 1960s to the present is a period full of performance practices moving away from or rhetorically resisting a textual basis, so understanding how authorship resists its own decentralization is crucial to understanding this period in theater and performance history. INDEX WORDS: Theater, Performance, Stand-up comedy, Musicals, Authorship, Copyright, Intellectual property, Collective theater, Radical theater, 1960s, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, The Wooster Group, The Open Theater, Rent, Ideology, Materialism, Marxism, Jonathan Larson, Playwrights. REINVENTING PERFORMANCE, REPRODUCTING IDEOLOGIES: LITERARY MODELS OF AUTHORSHIP AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICES FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT by GEORGE JARRARD PATE B.A., The University of South Carolina, 2007 M. A., The University of Tennessee, 2010 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2014 © 2014 George Jarrard Pate All Rights Reserved REINVENTING PERFORMANCE, REPRODUCTING IDEOLOGIES: LITERARY MODELS OF AUTHORSHIP AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICES FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT by GEORGE JARRARD PATE Major Professor: Marla Carlson Committee: David Saltz Frances Teague Oliver Gerland Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2014 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to acknowledge my wonderful committee, David Saltz, Fran Teague, Oliver Gerland, and, of course, my major professor Marla Carlson. This project would not exist if not for their invaluable feedback and advice. Their help on this dissertation is only tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mentorship and guidance I have received during my time at the University of Georgia. My thanks go out to the faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, including but certainly not limited to John Bray, Chris Sieving, Freda Scott Giles, Steven Carroll, Dina Canup, Adron Farris, Arnab Banerji, Alicia Corts, Ray Paolino, and John Kundert-Gibbs. The names deserving mention from other institutions are far too numerous, but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Stan Garner at the University of Tennessee, without whose encouragement I certainly would not be where I am today. I would also like to thank my parents, Mike and Georgianne Pate, for all of their support over the years, even when my choice of career must have seemed insane, and my entire family for believing in me. Finally, I would like to thank my brilliant fiancé, Libby Ricardo, for being so supportive, loving, encouraging, and understanding; for being an honest and critical editor and reader; and for putting up with a very stressed partner for the last few years. I know I would not have been able to complete this process without you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 1984: THE AUTHOR AS OWNER .............................................................................29 2 “A NECESSARY MYTH”: THE AUTHOR AS INDIVIDUAL .................................94 3 WHOSE JOKE IS IT ANYWAY? THE AUTHOR AS ORIGINATOR ...................146 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................198 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................212 1 INTRODUCTION The 1960s ushered in a new era of theatrical experimentation and innovative performance practices, many founded upon rejecting the text as a central authority or guiding principle for production. At the same time, theorists were busy declaring the author dead. But the author refused to die quietly, and attempts to emancipate performance from texts have followed a complex and non-linear path. The purpose of this study is to examine how the concept of authorship as a cultural construction affects theater and performance practices from the 1960s to the present. Several key developments in the relationship between authorship and performance occur in this period, and these changes and their effects have yet to be fully explored. Two questions regarding authorship and theater guide my research. First, what role does authorship play in theater and performance since the 1960s? Following Artaud’s call for “no more masterpieces,” innovative theater artists in the second half of the twentieth century often define themselves by their rejection of textual authority, so exploring the pressures authorship exerts on theater in this period provides important insight about the way theater defines itself in relation to and in distinction from other modes of cultural production. A number of court cases, legal articles, scholarly books, essays, and collections have examined the growing dissonance between postmodern theoretical reconsiderations of art and authorship on one hand and legal and institutional stagnancy on the other. My second question, then, asks what unique challenges theater and performance present in this growing body of research about the relationship between theory, the law, and cultural production. Though the precise effects of this relationship vary among the different theater and performance genres I examine, a major theme appears 2 repeatedly. Theater practitioners rhetorically embrace postmodern concepts such as the death of the author or espouse anti-capitalist ideological commitments while simultaneously engaging with modes of production ultimately aligned with an author-centric, hierarchical, capitalist ideology. I will argue that these conflicts result not from hypocrisy but from something much more complex: a series of contradictions and paradoxes built into legal and institutional systems that provide a place for resistant ideologies while simultaneously keeping them in check. The 1960s to the present is a period full of performance practices moving away from or rhetorically resisting a textual basis, so understanding how authorship resists its own decentralization is crucial to understanding this period in theater and performance history. The rest of this introduction broadly lays the groundwork for my investigating these questions. First, I will define several of my key terms and concepts: authorship, ownership, originality, individuality, ideology, intellectual property, and the death of the author. Then, I will provide a brief review of the literature on authorship in general and on theater as cultural production. Finally, I will provide an outline for the remaining chapters. Authors as Owners, Individuals, and Originators The author is a broad cultural construction, a contested term with a long and complex history. For the purposes of this study, I will focus on three attributes I see as essential to the definition of authorship in the twentieth century and into the present: ownership, individuality, and originality. In this section, I will define each of these attributes and point to the reasons they lead to conflict when applied to theater and performance. In his study of the relationship between Romantic authorship, copyright law, and ideology, legal scholar Oren Bracha identifies individuality, ownership, and originality as the three