Fabulation, Erasure and Distortion: Feminism on Stage

Catalog description

This course asks students to take up feminism (and its numerous intersections) as a method for theatrical presentation and composition, rather than merely a question of representation. We will not only interrogate the criteria by which a performance is deemed "feminist" but will also identify, analyze, and put into practice specific strategies and techniques for staging feminist questions and provocations onstage. Such techniques may range from erasure, to saturation, to fabulation, to distortion-a list that we will build upon as throughout our course. We will apply critical texts across feminist philosophy, critical race studies, and queer theory (including Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Iris Marion Young, and bell hooks among others) and analyze how these approaches to feminism are taken up by playwrights, performance artists, and dancers (including Caryl Churchill, Suzan-Lori Parks, Judy Chicago, and Narcissister among others).