The Theatre of Naomi Wallace Embodied Dialogues

by Stevens Abbitt, Erica; Cummings, Scott T.

• ISBN13: 9781137017918
• ISBN10: 1137017910
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-12-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Naomi Wallace, an American playwright based in Britain, is one of the more original and provocative voices in contemporary theatre. Her poetic, erotically-charged, and politically engaged plays have been seen in London's West End, off-Broadway, at the Comédie-Française, in regional and provincial theaters, and on college campuses around the world. Known for their intimate, sensual encounters examining the relationship between identity and power, Wallace's works have attracted a wide range of theatre practitioners, including such important directors as Dominic Dromgoole, Ron Daniels, Jo Bonney, and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Drawing on scholars, activists, historians, and theatre artists in the United States, Canada, Britain, and the Middle East, this anthology of essays presents a comprehensive overview of Wallace's body of work that will be of use to theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators alike.

Author Biography

Erica Stevens Abbitt is Associate Professor at the School of Dramatic Art at the University of Windsor, Canada, where she teaches courses in theatre history, contemporary theatre, women's studies and Canadian theatre practice. Her writings on feminist performance, youth culture, critical thinking, and theatre pedagogy have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, SIGNS: A Journal of Women and Culture, Performance Research, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and American Theatre magazine. 
 
Scott T. Cummings is Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature and Playwriting and Chair of the Theatre Department of Boston College, USA. He is the author of Remaking American Theatre: Charles Mee, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company (2006), Maria Irene Fornes (2012), and numerous performance reviews, essays, and articles on contemporary American theatre and drama.

Table of Contents

Preface: Embodied Dialogues; Erica Stevens Abbitt
Introduction: The Discourse of the Body; Scott T. Cummings
PART I: WRITINGS ON WALLACE
1. Death and Desire, Apocalypse, and Utopia: Feminist Gestus and the Utopian Performative in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Shannon Baley
2. Love in a Wound; Scott T. Cummings
3. Messianic Marxism in Naomi Wallace's Slaughter City and Things of Dry Hours; Buell Wisner
4. An American Exile in America; Vivian Gornick
5. The City that Embraced Naomi Wallace; Walter Bilderback
6. Naomi Wallace and the Dramaturgy of Rehearsal; Lindsay B. Cummings
7. Naomi Wallace and the Politics of Desire; Josephine Machon
8. Crucial Unspeakables, or Pedagogies of the Repressed: Directing Sex in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Beth Cleary
9. Mapping The Inland Sea: Naomi Wallace's British Epic Drama; Art Borreca
10. Slip's Bluff; Neil Chudgar
11. Journeys into the Heart of Whiteness: A Labor Historian Looks at the Work of Naomi Wallace; Peter Rachleff
12. Unbearable Intimacies: Occupation, Utopia, and Creative Destruction in The Fever Chart; Adam John Waterman
13. To Girl or Not To Girl; Erica Stevens Abbitt
PART II: COLLABORATORS
1. Standing on Your Head; Dominic Dromgoole
2. Naomi Is Inside My Head; Ron Daniels
3. Designing Wallace; Riccardo Hernandez
4. In the Fields of Naomi Wallace; Jessica Dromgoole
5. Radical Poetry; David Gothard
6. Being the 'Other': Naomi Wallace and the Middle East; Ismail Khalidi
7. Translating Wallace; Dominique Hollier
8. Betting on Naomi and the Boss; Raz Shaw
9. Mindscapes of Palestine; Erin B. Mee
10. Directing Wallace; Jo Bonney
11. Beautiful Resistance; Abdelfattah Abusrour
12. The Facts of Love; Robin D. G. Kelley
13. Nettle Soup; Bruce McLeod
PART III: WALLACE IN HER OWN WORDS
1. "Strange Times"
2. Seven Poems
3. "Let the Right One In"
4. Manifesto
5. "We Are Also Each Other"
6. "The Fish Story"
7. The Tal Pidae Lehrstücke
8. "On Writing as Transgression"