Reager Brian Reager Professor Jill Stevenson Dramatic Theory and Criticism May 4, 2013 Am I Woman? Hear Me Roar.

Feminist theory is arguably one of the most important and prolific theories to be utilized in the modern age. As with all theories, many theorists offer conflicting views on how to tackle feminism as well as apply it to the arts and theatre. One end of the spectrum is (or writing said to be feminist), penned by Hlne Cixous who believed in the ownership and emancipation of woman as well as the radical reformation of the patriarchal constructs of society to create a theatre that is itself woman. On the opposite end we have the materialist feminists such as Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir who see being a woman not as a natural calling that is required to be emancipated, but rather a systematic construction due to society and behavior. The major difference is that one is active, while the other seems to explore the individual identity of woman. However, when it comes to the production of feminist theatre and art, one cannot be active without exploring the reasons and construction of woman, in the same respect that exploring the reasons and construction of woman is not active enough to create art alone. Therefore a balance of both the active reformation of Cixous ideas and the further explorations of woman touched upon in materialist-feminism arguably creates a very paragon for an effective feminist theatre: as is the case with Caryl Churchills unanimously praised, Cloud Nine.

Reager Of all the manifestos involving the application of feminist theory in the arts, none quite hit such an abrasive note as that of French rhetorician and playwright, Hlne Cixous in her

article, The Laugh of Medusa written in 1976. Cixous inspires her female readers to take control of their bodies and write for women as women. She pleads for a splinter in the male-dominated models of theatre, writing, and performance and proposes women to create one that strengthens the womans body, voice, and artistic mind (Cixous, 875). Cixous manifesto begins with her explaining to her audience what writing as a woman will do: Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, form which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodiesfor the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal (Cixous, 875). Cixous is setting up in her first few sentences how the patriarchy has forced woman from her body; woman on a whole. I write this as a woman, toward women. When I say woman, Im speaking of woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses (Cixous, 875). Cixous instead of idealizing woman as an individual, describes an ideological universal woman: a woman who must bring others to fight against an equally universal and conventional man. Cixous not only seems to be concerned with the full-realization of women but also seems rather concerned with the full realization of men as men: I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man. So only an oblique consideration will be found here of man; its up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly. (Cixous, 877) She goes on to question Freuds theory of sexual identity and how she rebukes it, but doesnt seem to go into any further exploration of individual gender identification. Weve been

Reager turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty (Cixous, 885). This dogma, if you will, of owning a womans body and voice as woman as well as breaking away from the patriarchy through the practice of writing inspired Cixous to trickle into new perspectives about theatre. If writing could be specific towards woman, so could the theatre. If the stage is woman, she describes, It will mean ridding this space of theatricality. She will want to be a body-presence; it will therefore be necessary to work at exploding everything that makes for staginess (Cixous, Aller a la mer, 547). Cixous is inspiring her readers to react against common conventions of theatre to not only explode the male-dominated art form, but to install a womans presence.

Cixous manifesto was arguably one of the most important progressions towards feminist applications in art and theatre; but is the ownership and full realization of womens bodies by women the furthest that the feminist movement can go in art? Is the restructuring of the patriarchy the most effective way to explore feminist theory? Is claiming the body, more important than questioning it? Although Cixous proposal for feminist theatre in The Laugh of the Medusa inspires active empowerment and ownership of the womankinds body in a maledominated society, what it fails to question is the individual psychological and social influences that even construct the gender of woman, as well as the very nature of the act of performance. What makes someone a woman? Is woman inherently based in our bodies or is woman an idealism that is forced upon us by the very patriarchy that she is reacting against? If this is the case, is creating a universal woman too generalized and too one-dimensional of a construct? These are questions materialist feminists hope to answer. Instead of radically changing the system, materialist feminists hope to make change through the alienation of the gender signsystems or rather the black and white terms man and woman (Aston, 22).

Reager Judith Butler argues in her essay, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution that feminist theory naturally has to be expanded from the individual question to the universal in order to reach out to other women, however she challenges its effectiveness. She explains that feminist theory is a supposition that the life-world of gender relations is constituted, at least partially, through the concrete and historically mediated acts of individuals (Butler, 523). She

argues that one should consider the uselessness of a political movement which seeks to transform the political and social circumstances of women, without first: determining whether the category of woman is socially constructed in such a way that to be a woman is, by definition, to be in an oppressed situation (Butler, 523). Butler does not directly reference Cixous in her article, but one can collect that these two feminists would not necessarily agree on the same means to an end. While Cixous believes that ownership of the body and space is the most effective way to inspire political and social change for women, Butler argues that though noble in cause, this form of ownership portrays a false gender identity amongst women: In this effort to combat the invisibility of women as a category, feminists run the risk of rendering visible a category which may or may not be representative of the concrete lives of women (Butler, 523). Cixous views woman as an entity. Butler, as well as most materialist feminists view woman as an individual. Butler brings up existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and her theory of the formation of gender. Beauvoir claims that one is not born a woman but rather, becomes a woman (Butler, 519). Monique Wittigs One is Not Born a Woman directly supports de Beauvoirs theory. The Marxist-feminist explains that there is always a struggle between individual women and woman, the myth. Woman, according to Wittig is an imaginary

Reager formation, while women is the product of a social relationship (Whittig, 50-51). Once again, the very idea of woman is being questioned in favor of the individual circumastances. Naturally any social or political movement focuses more on the whole than on the individual, but feminism and gender theory are so specific to society and its relationship with the individual that even using the term woman ostracizes and exalts a gender role that is far less black and white than Cixous describes in her manifesto. However, Cixous is more active in her reimagining of the patriarchy as well as her wishes to change it. Women playwrights have taken Cixous approach in claiming and liberating the body by deconstructing and transforming

the patriarchal constructs of theatre and creating a style that can be considered woman and still fail to focus on the individual. Butler argues that the body is not submissively scripted with cultural codes, as if it were a lifeless recipient of wholly pre-given cultural relations, as some theorists would suggest, but neither do embodied selves pre-exist the cultural influence on gender, as Cixous would suggest (Butler, 519). So how does create a happy medium for both of these factors in the creation of theatre? Some playwrights have effectively adopted both viewpoints of owning the theatre and writing as woman, in addition to begging the question of what makes a woman a woman? As argued earlier, one of the most successful ways to adopt both viewpoints is through theatre. Literary Manager of the Womans Project at the American Place Theatre, Ga yle Austin describes in her essay Women/Text/Theatre, the advancements of female writers using Cixous active philosophy. Looking over the past decade, the most striking feature of feminist theatre groups, which evolve their own texts, is that they do not assume the forms of dominant western culture and simply fill them with womens content. There is more

Reager blending, less of a wall forming the binary opposition of form and content. Breaking that wall is part of their message and it is something from which other women writing for theatre can learn. They question everything and then develop or adapt structures which will express their concerns. (Austin, 185-186) One instance of this success through theatre by breaking down the wall both Cixous and Austin talk about is Cloud Nine, written by the notable British playwright Caryl Churchill. Originally written for the Joint Stock Theatre Group in 1978, Churchill formed the play by researching gender and feminist stereotypes and creating a workshop environment. What came, as a result is what Cixous would argue is complete ownership of theatre to make it written by woman for woman with a materialist-feminist perspective. The structure of Cloud Nine is already a reaction against the patriarchal unities of time and place, as the play has arguably none of the above. The first act takes place in British occupied Africa in the age of Queen Victoria, while the second act takes place in a London park in 1979which in the play has only spanned twenty-five years. The first act explores gender roles in their given context of the Victorian era, while the second act explores gender roles in a more realized present day context. In addition to this, the characters are played in the first act by people of the opposite sex, race, and age, furthering the break from the normal tradition of theatre and arguably creating a new style that Churchill can assert as woman. Additionally, Churchill balances this ownership by means of the unconventional characters with the very argument that counters Cixous l : that of materialist feminism.

In the play Betty, a man wearing womans clothing portrays the colonial administrators wife. The character is not a drag queen or a gay man, but rather a woman who identifies her gender as that of a man. Societal constraints force Betty to wear a dress and act as women do,

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even though it is uncomfortable for her/him. The same device is used for the young son, Edward who is played by a woman. Edward shows early signs of effeminate behavior through his activities (such as playing with dolls) and interactions with Harry Bagleywhich are sexual in nature. Harry on the other hand is portrayed by a man but has sex with the servant Joshua and the young boy Edward, showing that Harrys sexuality differs from that of his gender identity. The plays casting can be seen as a mechanism to emphasize the materialist theory that gender identity is, as Whittig puts it, a social relationship rather than an inherent universal sex. Elin Diamond explains in her essay (In)Visible Bodies in Churchills Theatre that the characters and the respective casting foreground the ways in which culture, through its head of the family, discipline the body and force it to emit signs of clear masculinity and femininity (Diamond, 196). Betty chastices Edward for playing with dolls: Edward, Ive told you before, dolls are for girls (Churchill, 30). And Betty expresses her solidarity to the patriarchy as well as that of the gender constructs it enacts: I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life to be what he looks for in a wife. I am a mans creation as you see, And what men want is what I want to be (Churchill, 1). Are all the women in the play able to identify with the universal woman that Cixous idealizes? Are all the men in this play able to identify with the conventional man? These are the questions that Churchill asks of her audience. Cixous writes that the woman must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writings which, when the moment of her liberation has come will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history (Cixous, 880). Like Churchill, many playwrights such as Mara Irene Forns and Adrienne Kennedy have followed in this active pursuit of creating a style that can be categorized as woman without compromising the materialist feminist ideologies. Theatre is arguably meant to expose, attack and question its

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audiences. It would seem only appropriate that a feminist theatre should not have to compromise one for the other. Theatre cannot just comment on the broad idea of woman as Cixous does, but on the individual; just as theatre cannot just focus on the individual, as materialist-feminists do, but it must reinterpret and rework the patriarchal constructs of the theatre. Feminist theatre must claim the body, claim the space, and claim the structure, but also question the individual body, question the individual space, and question the individual structure.

Reager Works Cited

Aston, Elaine. Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook. New York, NY: Routledge (1999): Print. Austin, Gayle. Women/Text/Theatre. Performing Arts Journal. Vol. 9, No. 2/3, 10th Anniversary Issue: The American Theatre Condition (1985): 185-190. Print. Butler, Judith. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal. Vol. 40, No. 2 (1988): 519-531. Print. Cixous, Hlne The Laugh of the Medusa. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs. Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976): 875-893. Print. Cixous, Hlne Aller a la mer, trans. B.Kerslake, Modern Drama, (1984): 5468. Print. Churchill, Caryl. Cloud 9. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., (1995). Print. Diamond, Elin. "(In)Visible Bodies in Churchill's Theatre." Theatre Journal. Vol. 40, No. 2 (1988): 188-204. Print. Whittig, Monique. One is Not Born a Woman. Feminist Issues. Vol. 1, No. 2 (1981): 47-54. Print.