dissertation abstract
The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and similar political campaigns have sensitized artists and academics to the idea that representations influence the ways that members of minority groups see themselves and are seen by others-- and that there are "better" or "worse" ways to represent people who belong to those groups. In this dissertation, I examine the ways that some contemporary dramatists, directors, actors, and other theatre artists construct dramatic characters with disabilities, in order to explore what political and social implications their representations might have for real people with disabilities. By using disability as a critical concept in an extended analysis of the processes of making theatre, I hope to open up the debate over the politics of theatrical representation from the "inside" of practice-- to find theoretical tools that apply to what playwrights, actors, and directors actually do in the creation of theatrical performances, rather than looking from the "outside" of how the finished performances are received.
Some of the most commonly invoked concepts in critical debates about the politics of representation are problematic when applied to theatrical representations, particularly the ideas that representations of disability should not be "unrealistic," that casting should be "blind," that actors naturalistically "become" their characters, and that an artist's identity should be a factor in determining the "authority" of a particular representation. Each chapter examines one of these ideas in relation to the creative choices of playwrights, directors, actors, and other artists, with special attention to the process of theatrical rehearsal. I conclude that theatrical acting is always a process of relating bodies to one another, and that most useful discussions about the political implications of theatrical representations of disability locate the politics of representation in the process of relating across differences rather than in the bodies themselves.