PERFORMING CULTURE, PERFORMING ME: EXPLORING TEXTUAL POWER THROUGH REHEARSAL AND PERFORMANCE Melinda Arteaga Gonzales, B.S. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS December 2005 APPROVED: John M. Allison, Jr., Major Professor Kelly Taylor, Committee Member John Gossett, Committee Member and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Gonzales, Melinda Arteaga. Performing Culture, Performing Me: Exploring Textual Power through Rehearsal and Performance. Master of Arts (Communication Studies), December 2005, 241 pp., references, 156 titles. This thesis project explores Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of a new mestiza consciousness, in which the marginalized ethnic American woman transcends her Otherness, breaks down the borders between her different identities, and creates a Thirdspace. Through the rehearsal and performance process, three ethnic American women employed Robert Scholes’ model of textuality—the consumption and production of texts—as a framework to construct a new mestiza consciousness, and create a Thirdspace. The project set to determine what strategies were significant rehearsal techniques for encouraging the cast members to exercise textual power and claim a new mestiza identity, a Thirdspace. The results reveal four overarching factors involved in assuming textual power through rehearsal and performance in the production— building trust, having appropriate skills, assuming ownership and responsibility, and overcoming performance anxiety. The discussion addresses the direct link between Thirdspace and Scholes’ notion of production of original texts. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary people whose guidance and support helped me to complete this thesis project. First, I am indebted to two amazing women, Elizabeth Okigbo and Tam Tran, for their participation and cooperation as cast members and co-directors of this project. They were my true inspiration for developing the performances and pursuing my thesis project. I consider myself fortunate for having had the chance to work with them and to become their friend. I am extremely grateful to my major professor, Dr. Jay Allison, for his guidance, wisdom, and support throughout my graduate studies. In particular, I am grateful to him for guiding me through the thesis process with expertise and patience. I greatly appreciate the patience and flexibility of my committee—Dr. Kelly Taylor and Dr. John Gossett. I value the helpful suggestions and guidance from Dr. Juandalynn Taylor. Also, I would like to thank my friends and family for their encouragement and support during the years of progress towards the completion of my degree. Special thanks to Meredith Hebenstreit for giving me the strength to continue to work and complete my thesis project. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Elsa and Fermin Gonzales, for giving me this wonderful heritage, of which I am very proud to claim. Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have their encouragement and guidance to help me achieve my personal and academic goals. Without their unconditional love and support, none of this would have ever been possible. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................................ii Chapters 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY .......................................................... 1 Introduction to the Problem Statement of the Problem Definition of Ethnic Labels Scope of the Study Significance of the Study Plan of the Study 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................................................................... 17 Identity and Otherness Whiteness Feminist Standpoint Theory Latinas and Ethnic Labels Chicana as Label Chicana Feminist Identity The New Mestiza Consciousness and Thirdspace Conclusion 3. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................. 49 Creating the Process through the First Performance Creating the Process through Scholes and Textual Practice Evaluating the Rehearsal and Performance Process Conclusion 4. RESULTS .............................................................................................. 63 Method of Analysis Synopsis of Consumption and Production Acts Results Conclusion iii 5. DISCUSSION ........................................................................................ 97 Interpretation of the Results Limitations Suggestions for Future Studies Conclusion Appendices A. THESIS PERFORMANCE SCRIPT: PACE PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL ............................................................................................................. 106 B. THESIS PERFORMANCE SCRIPT: SECOND PERFORMANCE....... 113 C. REHEARSAL JOURNAL ..................................................................... 134 REFERENCES.......................................................................................................... 224 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY Introduction to the Problem She stands on the borders of two cultures: she is part of both but partner in neither. She is the ethnic-American woman. In the United States, race, ethnicity, and gender are used as measures of American identity (Carbaugh, 1996). These three standards help construct a dominant social identity against a background of excluded individuals and social groups that are represented as the Other. Ethnic-American women, however, are multiply Other-ed in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. Ethnic-American women experience Otherness as members of racial/ethnic groups in relation to the dominant culture; they experience Otherness as women in relation to the dominant culture; they experience Otherness as women within racial/ethnic groups. In the poem “Legal Alien,” Pat Mora (1985) illustrates the struggles many ethnic-American women face with being the Other, and with having a hyphenated identity. --Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural, able to slip from "How's life?" to "Me'stan volviendo loca," able to sit in a paneled office drafting memos in smooth English, able to order in a fluent Spanish at a Mexican restaurant, American but hyphenated, 1 viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic, perhaps inferior, definitely different, perhaps inferior, definitely different, (their eyes say, "You may speak Spanish but you're not like me") an American to Mexicans a Mexican to Americans a handy token sliding back and forth between the fringes of both worlds by smiling by masking the discomfort of being pre-judged Bi-laterally. The images of alienation and isolation are vivid in her experiences. She cannot exist peacefully in any of her cultures, because each culture views her as inferior and different. The hyphen becomes a borderland that she inhabits; she is imprisoned in the hyphen. If she wants to bring the cultures together, she must find a way to cross the borders and redefine her identity. She must develop a new mestiza consciousness. La mestiza is the feminine, Spanish word for a woman who can identify with at least two different cultures. In 1987, Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa began an effort to empower ethnic-American women with experiences similar to those Mora describes by using the word mestiza to describe a woman alienated from her own culture, as well as 2 from the hegemonic culture. Anzaldúa advocates a new mestiza consciousness as a way “to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended” (p. 102). The new mestiza consciousness is an attempt to lift the ethnic-American woman out of her life in the hyphen. Accordingly, la mestiza must become the new mestiza, transforming the hyphen from a border into a bridge that connects two cultures. In so doing, the new mestiza opens up in these spaces a Thirdspace between the different worlds she inhabits, wherein escape from domination and subordination is possible (Soja, 1996). As part of the attempt to redefine their identities and open a Thirdspace, ethnic- American women are finding contexts and mediums through which to voice the experiences and frustrations of living in the hyphen. For example, Barbara Christian (1990), a Black Feminist literary critic, points out that African-American women traditionally have used mediums like cooking, quilting, and singing to assert their identities, but none of these media have been as successful as literary texts. As Christian contends, language expresses what one knows or feels and storytelling is an active form of remembering and recreating (p. 576). Through storytelling, African- American women such as Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Toni Morrison work to reclaim and redefine significant aspects of African-American women’s experience such as sexuality, spirituality, and beauty. Similarly, Asian-American women such as Marilyn (Mei Ling) Chin, Genny Lim, and Nellie Wong use texts to re-invent their hyphenated American identity. By piecing together and sorting out the meaning of their pasts, distorted and omitted by racism, their texts seek to make a claim on America as part of their resistance to domination (Kim, 1987). 3 Correspondingly, Latina-American writers use their texts as resistance not only to cultural hegemony, but also to patriarchy that exists in both cultures— Latino and Anglo (Fernandez, 1994). A comparably small number of Latina texts including poetry, fiction, essay, and autobiography, assert Latina presence and identity. Nevertheless,