Overview

From Aristophanes to Split Britches, gender and performance have been inextricably linked to the stage. In a wide-ranging series of essays Re-Dressing the Canon examines the relationship and posits ways in which the self-referential conventions of theatre can reveal the performative element of gender. Analysing both canonical texts and contemporary productions in a lively, jargon-free prose style, Re-Dressing the Canon finds feminist fissures within the performance conventions of patriarchal drama. Among the dramatic texts considered are those of: Aristophanes Ibsen Yiddish theatre Mabou Mines Deborah Warner Shakespeare Brecht Ridiculous Theatre Split Britches Tony Kushner. Alisa Solomon moves beyond psychoanalytic approaches that have dominated feminist theatre criticism of the last decade, offering a new technique for investigating the relationship between theatre and gender. Re-Dressing the Canon bridges the boundary between theory and practice to make for a highly stimulating volume for theorists, students, contemporary performance-goers and practitioners alike.

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9780415157209

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Reviews

An important contribution to the study of theater, gender, and the feminist theory, this detailed study is broad in scope and has more useful material than many books twice the size. <br>- Choice, July/August 1998 <br>... the collection offers an engaging feminist perspective on the plays that the author selects. <br>-Steven Winn, San Fancisco Chronicle, March 1998 <br> A fresh, authoritative view of the canon as the seat, not the nemesis, of postmodern gender theory. ... Solomon is convincing and refreshingly nondogmatic. She has the knowledge, style, and suppleness of mind to make bedfellows of revisionists and dead white males. Her dissent is helpful, not dismissive, inclusive, not harsh. This invaluable contribution to the canon wars is rare manna from academia. <br>- Kirkus Reviews, December 1997 <br>

An important contribution to the study of theater, gender, and the feminist theory, this detailed study is broad in scope and has more useful material than many books twice the size. - Choice, July/August 1998 ... the collection offers an engaging feminist perspective on the plays that the author selects. -Steven Winn, San Fancisco Chronicle, March 1998 A fresh, authoritative view of the canon as the seat, not the nemesis, of postmodern gender theory. ... Solomon is convincing and refreshingly nondogmatic. She has the knowledge, style, and suppleness of mind to make bedfellows of revisionists and dead white males. Her dissent is helpful, not dismissive, inclusive, not harsh. This invaluable contribution to the canon wars is rare manna from academia. - Kirkus Reviews, December 1997

Theater critic, dramaturge, and Village Voice staff writer Solomon (English and Theater/City Univ. of New York Graduate Center) offers a fresh, authoritative view of the canon as the seat, not the nemesis, of postmodern gender theory. Solomon pairs close textual readings of gender complexity in Shakespeare, Ibsen, Aristophanes, and Brecht with reviews of avant-garde productions that unleashed what she considers the inherent trangressiveness of these writers' works. While feminist and queer theorists see only a reinforcement of heterosexism and phallocenlricity even in the canon's most ribald gender-bending, Solomon sees real subversion - an invitation to question gender norms. In her analysis of the British theater troupe Cheek by Jowl's all-male production of, As You Like It, the Mabou Mines role-reversed King Lear (Lear is played by a woman), the Yiddish King Lear, Charles Ludlum's Hedda Gabler, and the Split Britches' deconstructed A Streetcar Named Desire, Solomon sees a proper rediscovery of all the polymorphous potential endemic to these plays. To Solomon, these iconoclastic productions were neither as inventive nor as disrespectful as we might think. On the contrary, they did justice for the frost time to the richness of these classic texts. The crusty greats deserve more credit than we've given them, argues Solomon. They understood quite well, as did the Puritans who banned their art in Cromwell's England, that theater, as imitation, as performance, as self-consciousness, as irony, is tailor-made for revolt against the social shackles, not just of gender, but of class, race, and sexuality. Solomon is convincing and refreshingly nondogmatic. She has the knowledge, style, and suppleness of mind to make bedfellows of revisionists and dead white males. Her dissent is helpful, not dismissive, inclusive, not harsh. This invaluable contribution to the canon wars is rare manna from academia. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Alisa Soloman is a theatre ciritic, teacher and dramaturg in New York City. She is Associate Professor of English and Theatre at CUNY and a staff writer at the Village Voice.

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