Split Subject Technique for a Feminist Good Person: A Dramaturgical Study

Split Subject Technique for a Feminist Good Person: A Dramaturgical Study Linda Miles As a feminist dramaturg, I am both usefully and precariously positioned as a bridge between vision and practice. In a 1992 Theatre Topics article, feminist scholar and director Jill Dolan writes evocatively of an "epiphanic experience " combining theory and practice in production, an experience through which she was able to "remember" the power of performance to "resonate outside the institution's walls" ("Peeling Away" 41-42). By recognizing the auditorium as a space of potential for the reinvention of society, I seek to produce a model for dramaturgical study aimed at feminist change. Based on the assumption that theatre, like film, television, or advertising, can affect the way people perceive gender, the re-framing of scripts for new productions can radically alter the way those plays communicate ideas of gender. The primary strategy of my dramaturgical model is a difficult march across rather disparate (battle) fields, in this case toward a new enactment of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sichuan. Here, I use Brechtian theory, with its notions of the distanced spectator ; psychoanalytic theory, as an indication of how gender categories tend to function; and feminist theory, which looks for ways to change that functioning , in order to approach Brecht's gender-specific parable about strength and weakness and the difficulty of doing good. To simply meld these theoretical fields into one would be a monumental and misguided effort, erasing crucial contradictions (not to mention the breadth of differences within each of the three). How, then, to utilize what is valuable for this dramaturgical study around and among these three discrete fields? Here I take on the role of Jacques Derrida's bricoleur: . . . someone who uses . . . the instruments [she] finds . . . , those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogeneous—and so forth. (486) As feminist dramaturg /bricoleur (French for handy [wo]man—bricoleuse?), I seek to provide a strong, if provisional, foundation for feminist production by cri151 152 Linda Miles tiquing the bases of certain theoretical tools even as I propose to bring them through the auditorium doors and onto the stage. In this case, Brechtian theory provides feminist dramaturgs and directors with a model for political subversion within the theatrical context. Psychoanalytic theory provides a level of understanding about the way constructions of gender currently tend to function . Largely via psychoanalytic theory, feminist film theory provides us with ideas about how film, as a system of representation, can affect gender systems outside the cinema in both subversive and conservative ways. Finally, feminist performance theory, sharing the concerns of some film theorists, provides specific strategies for changing society's gender operations by the manipulation of representation in the theatre. What I call "split subject technique" is one such strategy, positing a female-identified protagonist struggling with her often younger, male-identified self and eventually both subduing and retaining the power of her more "masculine" identification. New modes of script creation and adaptation (i.e., those explored by feminist playwrights or collectives) have long been a focus for both feminist theatre activity and scholarship, and the self-conscious use of a split subject concept by feminist playwrights has been well documented.1 However, another subversive practice is the feminist re-direction of existing scripts, accompanying the current scholarly emphasis on feminist directors.2 Is it possible to adapt a split subject technique for use with a pre-existing script? Brecht's The Good Person of Sichuan is appropriate for split subject strategy because it provides a parable about a woman who finds it necessary to masquerade as her male cousin in order to function within her own historical context. In 1995 this play is as much about gender as it is undoubtedly about social and economic systems. While these elements seem incompatible in some lights, a dramaturgical study built across the disciplines of...