Feminist Resistance to the Coded-Male Auteur-Director

A feminist future must have collaboration and an acknowledgment of interdependence on many levels. Yet, this requirement ironically contradicts one of the main occupations taken up in our field, that of director. Commonly associated with the French New Wave movement, the 1950s wrought a theory of film direction that has influenced our current theatrical climate today, that of the auteur model. This model posits that it is the director (coded male) who is the true author of a piece of film, and this understanding carried over into theater direction as well. Despite technological and cultural advancements that encourage multiple perspectives, the myopic auteur-director has been maintained as the pinnacle of theatrical leadership and accomplishment.

A feminist future demands new approaches to this mode, or else we will be left to repeat the mistakes of history when it comes to leadership in the arts. These mistakes include a privileged, typically white framing to most stories, a mostly male perspective, and an individualist sense of purpose that lacks nuance. The possibilities that would manifest from feminist directing strategies include art creation with a holistic approach that takes into account collaboration as a necessary component and grants just as much importance to process as product. Companies are starting to engage with the feminist truth that the personal is political and are also able to step back and see the larger picture of the theater, recognizing that what is at stake is not just women's employment or a broader representation of the population but life itself, which hangs in the balance of their decisions. They take this responsibility very seriously, as do I.

Six years ago, I directed a production of Naomi Wallace's And I and Silence at the University of Kansas. The play is set in 1950s America and handles a friendship and romance between a white woman and a black woman who meet in prison. Gender issues (not to mention race and class issues) are particularly palpable in this piece. It was with this directing project that I made the feminist step, albeit trepidatiously, into more collaboration, specifically in the directing process. I apprehensively acknowledged that while I, from my gender studies background and dramaturgical research on the play, had extensive knowledge about the aforementioned issues, that knowledge was not as thorough as I felt a play like this deserved.

My approach began with eliciting assistance from disciplines outside of my home department. I brought together people from women, gender, and sexuality studies and from African and African American studies, as well as someone with invaluable insight into prison life for women. I asked these individuals to attend rehearsals and watch a scene or scenes from the play. A discussion then followed about what they saw, particularly drawing on their field expertise. My first collaboration will serve as my main example here. I met with Liam Lair and Ashley Mog, scholars from our university's Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Their areas of focus include gender identity, trans subjectivity, and disability studies. While there were several factors on which I wanted feedback, the motivating force for me asking them specifically was Dee, the white, largely uneducated, lower-class female character in And I and Silence. In casting, I found myself still leaning to the auteur in my steadfast assurance that I had the correct vision of Dee. I looked for women (each of the two roles is played by two women, the sixteenyear-old self and the twenty-five-year-old self) who could offer what I read to be a trans identity. The rehearsal I had Liam and Ashley attend was in the first half of the process. My actors were not entirely off book, and I asked them to perform a very emotionally and sexually charged scene. Though I was anxious about this exposure, I laid ground rules in order to protect my actors and make the workshop safer and more productive. After our visiting scholars viewed the scene of Dee reliving her sexual assault through Jamie's body and then both succumbing to their passions, I...