Feminist History, Theory, and Practice in the Shakespeare Classroom

In their final presentation of scenes, the students in my Shakespeare class staged for their audience two versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 2 scene 2. One was played straight, the other with gender-crossed roles. It was our hope that audience members would walk out of the theatre wondering why their reception to the two scenes was so different, and begin to question for themselves Shakespeare's construction of gender. The final presentation was the result of a class in which theory and practice converged. Our work was in part inspired by Jill Dolan, who argues compellingly for the consistent intersection of these two often divergent studies:

Theatre and performance help shape and promote certain understandings of who "we" are, of what an American looks like and believes in. As theatre and performance educators, training our students to enter an industry whose representations structure our national imagination, whose images citizens look to for knowledge, understanding, and support, means training our students to look past the classroom's walls into the larger culture. How dare we teach them that art is outside of history, outside of ideology.

("Rehearsing Democracy" 5)

This argument becomes even more significant when we note its relevance to feminist theatre.

When we pursue theatre practice without considering the conditions surrounding the historical and social status of women, we run the risk of reifying women's subordinate position in society. In Dolan's terms, to create theatre without an understanding of ideology and history is to fail to shape and promote certain understandings of who women are. "How dare we teach" our students that theatre is outside of the history of gender construction, outside of sexual ideology? And yet, in a classroom, joining theatre's disparate elements is a challenge, one which requires instructors of theatre practice and teachers of feminist theatre history and theory to work diligently to engage each other's areas of expertise. As Geraldine Harris notes, "While the perceived 'gap' between theory and practice is at times a locus of difficulty, it is also a potentially productive space" (2).

In this essay, I hope to offer one example of a "productive space," a paradigm not only of how feminist history/theory can coexist with theatre practice, but of how each can enrich the other in a pedagogical setting, allowing instructors the opportunity to address issues relevant to feminism while simultaneously pursuing practical theatre instruction.¹

She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv'd.

—Much Ado About Nothing 5.4.66²

My Shakespeare course for talented high school students in the 1998 Brown University Summer Focus Program was three weeks long. During that time, my students were with me for a minimum of four hours each day, five days per week, and spent their evenings reading plays and memorizing their lines—they had no other classes. By the second week, my class had already read, discussed, and performed scenes from Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. Today was our second day working with A Midsummer Night's Dream;tomorrow we would transition to Hamlet.

As it was the second day that we were working with a play, my students had finished reading it and had spent the night before memorizing scenes they had chosen and practicing with partners so that they would be prepared to perform before the class this morning. A young woman and a young man had decided to perform 2.2, the scene in the woods at night in which Lysander unsuccessfully tries to convince Hermia to have sex with him.

The two ascended the short steps leading to the performance space we had in the front of our classroom. Their scene was very funny. The class's laughter began with Lysander's first suggestion that "One turf shall serve as pillow for us both; One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth" (2.2.40-1). Punctuating his line, the...