Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre ed. by Sue-Ellen Case (review)

568 Book Reviews SUE-ELLEN CASE, ed. Pelforming Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 1990. pp. 327- $14.95 (PB) This book is a collection oftwenty articles on women playwrights orland feminist critical approaches to the field of theatre. Most of them were published in Theatre Journal between 1984 and 1989. They represent a variety of interests ranging from problems of representation for marginal groups (blacks, Chicanas, Jewish women or lesbians) to female roles in Shakespearean drama or the postmodem features of women'S performance art. Despite the editor's effort to group the texts neatly under four chapter titles, the book appears rather heterogeneous in both its thematic content and tenninology and [ was rather disappointed that it did not have either an index or a bibliography which would have assisted the reader in her/his search for an overview of the whole project. As an attempt to give the book some form of cohesion, the introduction does not seem too helpful. It is wrinen in a rather convoluted style and such express~ons as "essentialism' or "materialist deconstruction" are both overused and taken for granted, while, in fact, they cover very complex and even controversial issues. Although the editor tries to point out the contradictions at work within the book, she fails to mention her own blind spot which is also that of the whole collection: its American bias. For example, the book contains absolutely no mention of Canadian theatre and, except for the quotation by Nicole Brossard at the beginning of Teresa de Lauretis's text, it is as if Canadian feminists did not exist! Europeans fare a little better but most of the texts or authors quoted all date back from the seventies as if theatrical, theoretical, and feminist clocks had all stopped aIOund 1977· Many articles in the book, however, are original and worth reading or rereading. I particularly enjoyed Vivian Patraka's text on the Jewish subject, Yvonne Yarbro· Bejamo's study ofChicano Theatre and Sharon Willis's reading ofCixous's Portrait of Dora. In her study ofNeHy Sachs, Lilian Atlan, and Joan Schenkar, Patraka focuses on the combined notions of female and Jew in relation to history and the Holocaust. She avoids any transcendental generalizations by stressing the importance of historical elements and specific theatrical fonns. Yarbro-Bejamo's text retraces the history of Chicano theatre and its gender roles. Her analysis of a diverse collective subject and the creation of "a social audience" by two recent Chicana plays (Tongues o/Fire and Giving up the Ghost) is exciting. Willis's article on Dora is exemplary of both what a brilliant Freudian reading can achieve, and of how it can fail totally, in feminist tenns: it remains caught up in its own psychoanalytical web and never becomes aware of its dangerously idealistic premises. One ofthe book's great accomplishments is also its grouping ofthree important theoretical articles which are both intellectually Challenging and well written: Teres~ de Lauretis's subtle study of lesbian representation which goes far beyond the framework of theatre, Judith Butler's article on gender as a social fiction, a "perfonnative strategy," and "a corporeal field of cultural play" well anchored in history, and Barbara Freedman's thorough attempt to determine how psychoanalysis, feminism, and theatre can and cannot work together. It is no coincidence, I think, if these three texts have not been written by typical "English" or "Theatre" "specialists" but by Book Reviews comparatists who have obviously done research in mher fields. Despite itsedilOrial flaws and imperialist exclusions, Performing Feminisms is therefore a rich book worth buying and reading. JEANNETI'E LAILLOU SAVONA, TRINITY COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO RICHARD SCHECHNER. Peiformance Theory. London: Roulledge 1990. pp. xv, 304, iIlustraled. £'4.95 (PB). Performance Theory is a "revised and expanded edition" of Essays OIl Performance Theory 1970-1976. The earlier, more precisely titled, volume contained "Kinesics and Performance" an essay written with Cynthia Mintz, now excluded. In its place we find two additional essays, onc dated 1966 and the other from 1982, in its earliest version. The latter, "Magnitudes of Perfonnance," venturing boldly into a comprehensive semiotic categorization, dominates the new book. The other essays...