Geraldine Harris

A return to form?:postmasculinist television drama and tragic heroes in the wake of The Sopranos.

The paper considers The Wire in the light of the critical discourse around The Sopranos and with reference to Deadwood, Mad Men, and Sons of Anarchy. The aim is to argue that, collectively, these works might be categorised as ‘postmasculinist television drama’, analogous to the grouping of shows such as Ally McBeal and Sex and the City under the rubric of postfeminism. Like this latter category, postmasculinist dramas can be interpreted as displaying an ambiguous/ambivalent relation not just towards feminism but to other twentieth-century movements that were concerned with the de-centring of the normative, white masculine subject. Focusing primarily on issues of gender and medium, genre and form, the contention is that all these dramas create fictional worlds dominated by misogyny, homophobia, and racism whilst (apparently) establishing ‘ironic distance’ from these attitudes. Following up claims to the status of ‘tragedy’ made by, or for, all these works, this argument is developed by reading them in relation to early modern Revenge Tragedy. This suggests that, ultimately, they re-inscribe and reclaim for contemporary (white) masculinity the position of the (anti)-hero/subject as constructed by canonical tragedy, and defined in terms of the experience of existential ‘crisis’.

Differences in Degree or Kind? Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost and Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable

This essay responds to concerns that ‘immersive theatre’ potentially reflects neo-liberal values, by questioning the assumption that it may not do so. Focusing its argument through a comparison between Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man and Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost, the chapter complicates loosely defined, anti-capitalist political claims by which those engaged in the criticism or practice of ‘experimental’ live performance (or both) assert its fundamental progressiveness. The essay argues that the ability of immersive performance to ‘activate’ spectators, transforming them into ‘witnesses’ via a certain ‘undecidablity’ attributed to Ranciere, distorts his thinking by linking undecidability to particular formal strategies guaranteed by ‘ethical criteria’. Tracing the play of repetition and difference in debates around the relationship between aesthetics and politics from Peggy Phelan and Nicolas Bourriaud to Ranciere and Claire Bishop via figures such as Adam Alston, Jen Harvie, and Shannon Jackson, Harris asks what is at stake in this discourse and for whom?

Post-postfeminism? Amelia Bullmore’s Di and Viv and Rose, April de Angelis’s Jumpy and Karin Young’s The Awkward Squad

In a 2013 essay analysing recent British, women-centred, television crime drama, eminent feminist theorist Charlotte Brunsdon suggests there is evidence that as a ‘generative sensibility’, postfeminism has peaked and is now waning. Discussions of postfeminism have been more prevalent in media studies but as both Janelle Reinelt (2006) and Elaine Aston (2010) have asserted in the field of ‘new writing’ for the theatre over the last decade or so, its impact has been evident through an overt lack of engagement with feminism. This article considers Brunsdon’s contention in relation to theatre through the analysis of three plays, Amelia Bullmore’s Di and Viv and Rose (2011), April De Angelis’s Jumpy (2011) and The Awkward Squad by Karin Young (2012), all of which refer back to feminism of the 1980s. Understood as part of a small but notable upsurge in cultural production that ‘re-visits’ and ‘re-claims’ aspects of this politics recent past often ignored, overlooked or rejected under the dominant postfeminist narrative, the success of these three plays can be perceived as part of a broader cultural moment in the UK in which feminism appears to be ‘fashionable’ again. As such, they offer the opportunity to learn some of the lessons not just of feminist history but of historiography, in regard of what ‘stories’ are told about this politics past in the present and what alliances these might enable in the future.

Foreshadowings and after blows: Fiona Templeton's The Medead (in progress)

Abstract This article offers a ‘preview’ of Fiona Templetons work in progress, The Medead. It arises from my ‘access’ to her process and explores certain aspects of that work, but primarily sets out to explore the piece as a performative deconstruction of the myth of Medea, as articulated and disseminated through the play by Euripides. I examine the manner in which the piece foregrounds the operation of intertextuality to disrupt normative notions of time and space, and works on the boundaries between the linguistic and the material, so as to stage the ways in which stories can shape bodies and construct ‘realities’.

Investigating ‘fame-inism’: The politics of popular culture:

This special section of Feminist Theory emerged from the interdisciplinary workshop ‘The Politics of Popular Culture’, organised by the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at Lancaster University in March 2015 as part of Hear Me Roar, Lancaster’s first feminist arts festival. This festival brought together diverse performances and audiences embracing very different approaches to and understandings of feminism. The shows ranged from the Rose Theatre’s rehearsed reading of a previously unperformed Restoration Comedy by Elizabeth Polewheedle, to the participatory ‘Bush Rush’ in the town square which invited everyone to join in a mass performance of the choreography for Kate Bush’s celebrated single Wuthering Heights. Reflecting this context, the workshop invited participants to explore ideas around gender, performance, activism, mediation and spectatorship.

Ceci n’est pas un argument appropré (this is not a proper argument)

Abstract This provocation poses questions of various sizes ‘inspired’ by some of the written publications that have theorised the concept of Practice as Research and drawing on lessons learnt from supervising PhD’s (with and without PaR). It consists of ‘musing’ rather than a proper argument and makes reference to feminism. Some readers might find both of these things very irritating. Throughout the course of its musing, questions asked include: ‘Is it acceptable to start a sentence with ‘And’ in academic writing?; ‘What does and does not have the status of ‘theory’? And who does and does not have the status of a theorist? and ‘What is a proper argument?’ No answers are provided and no conclusions drawn.

Après toutes ces elles/After All this Else: ‘New’ French Feminisms Translated to the British Scene

This chapter is a consideration of the impact on British theatre and performance of what in the 1980s and early 1990s was often termed ‘New French Feminisms’. This is an enormous topic for a short essay so Carl and Clare, the editors of this volume, have encouraged me to take something of an autobiographical approach. This means that this account is largely written from the perspective of British feminist theatre criticism…but not entirely — since in this area above all, ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ (should in theory) be as inseparable as the layers of a mille feuille.

Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of ‘We’?

In the concluding remarks of the introduction to her highly influential book Feminism and Theatre, Sue Ellen Case observed: I think it [Feminism and Theatre] suggests the radical way in which feminism has affected all aspects of theatre, changing theatre history and becoming a major element in twentieth-century theatre practice. The feminist critic or practitioner need no longer adopt a polemic posture in this art, but can rely on the established feminist tradition in the theatre, with its growing number of practitioners and adherents.1

A review of women in dramatic place and time: Contemporary female characters on stage by Geraldine Cousin

A review of women in dramatic place and time: contemporary female characters on stage by Geraldine Cousin. Routledge, London, 1996, 211pp, ISBN: 0–415–06733–2 (hardback), 0–415–06734–0 (paperback)

But Is It Art? Female Performers in the Café-Concert

The Cafe-Concert as an object of study has tended to attract the interest of art rather than theatre historians, despite the fact that it was the major form of popular entertainment in France during the nineteenth century. Similar but not identical to the English music hall of the same period, the Cafe-Concert produced a number of stars of national importance, a large majority of whom were women. Through the writings of journalists and commentators of the period, this article explores how these female performers were perceived and constructed as objects of the public gaze. The author, Geraldine Harris, is a Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, with interests in both popular and feminist theatre.