I Scenes of Instruction, Scenes of Seduction: Figurations of Adolescence on the Late Twentieth-Century Stage A dissertation submitted by Carolyn E Salvi In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English Tufts University August 2011 Copyright 2011, Carolyn E Salvi Advisors: Dr. Joseph Litvak and Dr. Martin Harries II Abstract This dissertation seeks to trouble our culture's overvaluation of innocence by exploring the literary consequences of theatrical situations in which the scene of seduction and the scene of instruction are presumed to be one and the same. Because the adolescent stands in between the more actively theorized positions of child and adult, partaking of characteristics of both but not fully either, the adolescent crystallizes our cultural anxieties about what it means to pass on culture linguistically, morally, aesthetically, and politically. By focusing on the figure of the adolescent as the proto-citizen I am able to investigate the degree to which the overvaluation of innocence is connected to a desire to deny possibilities for radical social transformation. Chapter 1 reads Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia in order to establish norms of discourse around adolescence: more specifically investigating how the text participates in fetishization of the child figure in order to stave off the threat of the teenager's uncanny knowledge. Chapter 2 uses Peter Shaffer's play Equus to map out the widespread influence of Freud's legacy on our modern conceptions of adolescence and adolescent sexuality, exploring how deviant sexuality is constructed as a potent threat to the social order which dangerously reduces the adolescent‘s ability to take their place in the machinery of citizenship. While my first two chapters delineate the rhetorical tactics used to keep adolescents from achieving full citizenship, my second two chapters explore what happens when youth act as citizens anyway, disregarding their structural disenfranchisement in attempts to remake the civic sphere. Chapter 3 contrasts the different models of citizenship articulated by Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. Drawing heavily on Lauren Berlant's theories of infantile and diva citizenship I argue that these plays investigate the relationship of private trauma to public embodiment, reframing the relationship between intellectual and sexual knowledge as the capacity to successfully enter into critical consciousness. Chapter 4 gives a reading of the film The City of Lost Children to demonstrate how a reimagining of the child and adolescent through aesthetics rather than ideology can support the development of new epistemologies. III Acknowledgments This may well be one of the longest sets of acknowledgments ever, but I believe in practicing gratitude and I have much to be grateful for. Every name on this list deserves to be here, and doubtless I will find later that I have left someone out. It is both right and proper that I should thank here the members of my dissertation committee who have given this project their time and attention. At Tufts, Joseph Litvak, Judith Haber, and Radiclani Clytus have given both dutifully and generously and I am grateful to them for all they have given me during my time at Tufts. Martin Harries deserves deepest thanks for the excellent quality of his criticism, incisive questions, and patience. What I think of as the "heavy lifting" and day-to-day support for this project has come from colleagues and friends near and far. For their brilliance, excitement, and sense of humor I want to particularly thank my dissertation working group: Cynthia Williams, Anne Moore, and Claudia Stumpf. My gratitude to you ladies is exceeded only by the deep pleasure of working with you. Other colleagues at Tufts have also provided generously of their time and insights. Most especially, and in no particular order, I want to thank Nathan Paquet, Cheryl Alison, Marta Rivera Monclova, Jessica Wandrei, Kellie Donovan Condron, and Greg Schnitzpahn. Thanks go to Nicole Flynn and Laurel Hankins for organizing the dissertation writing retreat last summer during which I completed Chapter Three. Kristina Aikens deserves a special mention for helping me get access to additional disability services when I most needed support, and for helping me know that my requests were both reasonable and easily accommodated. Barbara J. Orton and Anne Moore (again) deserve thanks for being wonderful proofreaders who have helped me IV deliver a much cleaner manuscript than I would've been able to manage on my own. Noah Barrientos and Chantal Hardy deserve special awards for administrative sainthood. Special love and thanks goes to Elizabeth Leavell for her extraordinary friendship. Colleagues outside of the Tufts English Department have also been invaluable support. Shane Landrum of the Brandeis History Department, Michael-Beth Dinkler of Harvard‘s Religion Department, Courtney VanVeller of Boston University‘s Religion Department, and Ellen Goldstein of Tufts‘ Math Department all made and kept commitments to come and work with me during long "dissertation retreats" (which Marta gets double-credit for introducing me to) and without which I certainly would not have finished this project. Beatrice Gruendler of Yale deserves special mention for cheerleading and unwavering belief in my intellectual abilities. For consistent and persistent study-hall company for literally years of my life as a graduate student I must thank John Kraemer, formerly of MIT, one of my best friends who also happens to be wicked smart. To my weekly writing partner, Jessie Stickgold-Sarah of Brandeis‘s English Department, I say a thousand ―thank you‘s‖ and ―hell yes, now we can talk about something else!" and ―time for beer!‖ Gratitude for emotional, logistical, and even culinary support go to the following: the Abraham family, Leah Bloom, Michael Feeley, Johanna Bobrow, Eric Mumpower, Sarah Whedon, Bridget Kraemer, Brenna Yovanoff, Sierra Black, Martin Hunter, Rio and Serena Hunter-Black, Meg Grady-Troika, Ry Strohm-Herman, Laura Pang, Julia Starkey, Deborah Kaplan, Alan Peterson, Marc and Rebecca Moscowitz, Sam Musher, Michelle and Lance Nathan, T. Thorne Coyle, Michel Fitos, Sabine Bartlett, Simone Fitos, Vicka Corey, Michael Walz, Joanne McLernon, Sarah Twichell, Sarah Wachter, Ofer Inbar (Cos), Rachel Silber, Rachel Mello, Daniel Miles, Terra Brown, Shana Brown, Aaron Bailey, Megan Manley, Martin V Chase, Matthew Major, Luke and Rose Campagnola, Tom Radcliffe, and Van Lepthien. My cats, Maggie, Thalia, and Diego deserve thanks for helping me sit still and write and think. I want to thank Roseann Ridings, Marcus Schulkind, Dean Vollick, and the community of dancers at Green Street Studios and The Dance Complex for helping me keep doing all of the different things I love. And the best for last: to my brother, Kenneth Ralph Knox, who died on April 12, 2011, my deepest love. You were always my best teacher. To John Hill, my mother's partner, thank you for joy and love and for picking my grapes off the stems when I couldn't. To my amazing mother, Mary Berg, who has fretted and cheered, laughed and cried with me, there are not enough words. I wouldn't be half the person I am without you, and my pride at being your daughter is matched only by my awe at the great good fortune that lets us be each other's family. The real hero of this dissertation, however, is my husband Aatish Salvi, who has supported me on every conceivable level on each and every day of this long process. Friend and lover, reader, interlocutor, confidant, conversationalist, cheerleader -- you have been all that and more. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having years and years more of my life with you. VI Table of Contents Introduction: Scenes of Instruction, Scenes of Seduction 1 Chapter 1: Wanted Dead or Alive: Teenagers and the Threat 51 of Prophetic Vision in Arcadia Chapter 2: Puppy Dog Tales: The Adolescent Male in Equus 100 Chapter 3: Child Brides: The Seductiveness of Innocence 150 in The Crucible and How I Learned to Drive Chapter 4: A Krank‘s Dream: Aesthetics and Ideology in 202 The City of Lost Children Works Cited 245 VII Scenes of Instruction, Scenes of Seduction: Figurations of Adolescence on the Late Twentieth-Century Stage Salvi 1 Introduction Scenes of Instruction, Scenes of Seduction: Figurations of Adolescence on the Late Twentieth Century Stage To the best of my knowledge, the one and only production of Frank Wedekind‘s highly controversial play Spring‟s Awakening to ever cast actual thirteen and fourteen-year-olds in the roles took place in Boston in April of 2009 by the Zeitgeist Stage Company. In 1891, Frank Wedekind had the play published at his own expense. Over time, this text would prove to be one of the most censored plays in all of theater history. The play would not see its first performance until 1906, when Max Reinhardt directed the world premiere in Berlin. 1917 saw the first American production of the play in English, a single matinee which almost failed to take place because the City Commissioner of Licenses tried to stop it from going forward.1 Only an injunction from the Supreme Court of New York allowed the curtain to rise. According to translator Eric Bentley, "Wedekind was so ‗explicit‘ in this play that he seems to many of his readers closer to the underground erotica of the Victorian age (which abounded) than to any dramatic literature above ground" (x). And what was it, precisely, that Wedekind was so explicit about? In short, all of the issues of sexuality culture still fights over: homosexuality, rape, abortion, masturbation, parent-child incest, and sadomasochism, not to mention suicide, censorship, and reform schools. Bentley opines that while his own translation is now one of several reasonably accurate texts available, in production the play continues to be censored because it is always performed by adult actors, or at least those who have reached their legal majority.