Editorial Comment

The discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference.¹

Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse"

In a 2001 article entitled "The Black Performer and the Performance of Blackness: The Escape or a Leap to Freedom by William Wells Brown and No Place to Be Somebody by Charles Gordone," I drew on Bhabha's notion of the productive ambivalence of mimicry, a concept which has particular relevance to this Special Issue, "Theorizing the Performer":

Translated to the theatrical performance, the performer succeeds because of the ambivalence, the excess, the slippage between him or herself, his or her role, and the social implications of that performer and of that role. The audience applauds a performance because it recognizes the performer's 'productive' negotiation of this ambivalence.

Invariably, then, the act of performing involves negotiating a series of ambivalent relations that—depending on the context and content of the performance, and the desire and designs of the performer—are or can become emotionally, culturally, socially, racially and even sexually charged. How can we theorize these negotiations? What do such processes tell us about the nature of performing and its larger social and cultural implications? These are precisely the questions addressed by the six articles contained within this Special Issue. We start and end with two articles that deal with these matters theoretically. These articles sandwich four other essays that examine specific performers, past and present, and address how the work of these particular performers confronts issues of race, disability, gender and politics.

In our opening essay, Joseph Roach takes up the question of "It." What does it mean when we note that a performer has "It": that seemingly intangible quality that makes a performer simultaneously engaging, exciting and dangerous? In his effort to theorize the potentially untheorizable, Roach looks historically and critically at the concept. He investigates the social and cultural factors, the dynamics of commercialism, and the ambivalent and even contradictory qualities that enable one to have It.

In examining the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic;, Peggy Phelan meditates on the ambivalence between art and capital, celebrity and social meaning. Phelan looks across Abramovic;'s body of work but focuses on her critically acclaimed The House with the Ocean View (2001). This live performance and its reception become the site for Phelan to reconsider the impact of liveness and the ethical potential that exist within the dynamic engagement of the performer and spectators at the live event.

Carrie Sandahl in "Black Man, Blind Man: Disability Identity Politics and Performance" revisits and reasserts the value of disability identity politics through her examination of solo performance artist Lynn Manning. Sandahl explores the ways in which Manning's autobiographical performance piece, Weights, confronts the ambivalences of his identities, being both black and blind. Discussing Manning's performance of Weights for the 2003 meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, Sandahl critiques Lennard Davis's controversial disability theories and interrogates the power of experience and the paradoxes of visibility for minority communities.

Camille Forbes' "Dancing with 'Racial Feet': Bert Williams and the Performance of Blackness" examines the complex figure of Bert Williams, a performer hailed for his comic genius yet castigated for perpetuating demeaning black images. Closely reading his performance work as well as examining his off-stage life and interviews, Forbes reveals how Williams was able to subvert and critique existing stereotypes of blackness. Revising the historical record, Forbes argues that even as he performed in blackface, Williams productively negotiated the ambivalences between racial expectations and performative power of race.

With his article "Charles Parsloe's Chinese Fetish: An Example of Yellowface Performance in Nineteenth-Century American Melodrama," Sean Metzger examines how the yellowface performances of Charles Parsloe in the nineteenth century conformed to and even helped to form racial expectations of the time. Metzger situates Parsloe's stage personas in the social and historical context of early Chinese immigration and American relations with the China in the late 1800s. Investigating the performance texts as well as Parlsoe's employment of Orientalist costuming, Metzger...