The Theatre of Naomi Wallace: Embodied Dialogues

by Scott T. Cummings, E. Stevens Abbitt (Editor), Erica Stevens Abbitt

Overview

Naomi Wallace, an American playwright based in Britain, is one of the more original and provocative voices in contemporary theatre. Her poetic, erotically-charged, and politically engaged plays have been seen in London's West End, off-Broadway, at the Comédie-Française, in regional and provincial theaters, and on college campuses around the world. Known for their intimate, sensual encounters examining the relationship between identity and power, Wallace's works have attracted a wide range of theatre practitioners, including such important directors as Dominic Dromgoole, Ron Daniels, Jo Bonney, and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Drawing on scholars, activists, historians, and theatre artists in the United States, Canada, Britain, and the Middle East, this anthology of essays presents a comprehensive overview of Wallace's body of work that will be of use to theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137017925
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	12/18/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Shannon Baley, St. Edward's University, USA Buell Wisner, Georgia Perimeter College, USA Vivian Gornick, critic, essayist, and memoirist Walter Bilderback, Wilma Theater, USA Lindsay B. Cummings, University of Connecticut, USA Josephine Machon, Middlesex University, USA Beth Cleary, director, playwright, and scholar Art Borreca, University of Iowa, USA Neil Chudgar, Macalester College, USA Peter Rachleff, Macalester College, USA Adam John Waterman, American University of Beirut, Lebanon Dominic Dromgoole, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, UK Ron Daniels, director Riccardo Hernandez, scenic designer Jessica Dromgoole, producer and director David Gothard, director Ismail Khalidi, poet, actor, and playwright Dominique Hollier, actor, translator, and dramaturg Raz Shaw, director Erin B. Mee, scholar, activist, and director Jo Bonney, director Abdelfattah Abusrour, writer, actor, and painter Robin D. G. Kelley, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Table of Contents

Preface: Embodied Dialogues; Erica Stevens Abbitt Introduction: The Discourse of the Body; Scott T. Cummings PART I: WRITINGS ON WALLACE 1. Death and Desire, Apocalypse, and Utopia: Feminist Gestus and the Utopian Performative in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Shannon Baley 2. Love in a Wound; Scott T. Cummings 3. Messianic Marxism in Naomi Wallace's Slaughter City and Things of Dry Hours; Buell Wisner 4. An American Exile in America; Vivian Gornick 5. The City that Embraced Naomi Wallace; Walter Bilderback 6. Naomi Wallace and the Dramaturgy of Rehearsal; Lindsay B. Cummings 7. Naomi Wallace and the Politics of Desire; Josephine Machon 8. Crucial Unspeakables, or Pedagogies of the Repressed: Directing Sex in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Beth Cleary 9. Mapping The Inland Sea: Naomi Wallace's British Epic Drama; Art Borreca 10. Slip's Bluff; Neil Chudgar 11. Journeys into the Heart of Whiteness: A Labor Historian Looks at the Work of Naomi Wallace; Peter Rachleff 12. Unbearable Intimacies: Occupation, Utopia, and Creative Destruction in The Fever Chart; Adam John Waterman 13. To Girl or Not To Girl; Erica Stevens Abbitt PART II: COLLABORATORS 1. Standing on Your Head; Dominic Dromgoole 2. Naomi Is Inside My Head; Ron Daniels 3. Designing Wallace; Riccardo Hernandez 4. In the Fields of Naomi Wallace; Jessica Dromgoole 5. Radical Poetry; David Gothard 6. Being the 'Other': Naomi Wallace and the Middle East; Ismail Khalidi 7. Translating Wallace; Dominique Hollier 8. Betting on Naomi and the Boss; Raz Shaw 9. Mindscapes of Palestine; Erin B. Mee 10. Directing Wallace; Jo Bonney 11. Beautiful Resistance; Abdelfattah Abusrour 12. The Facts of Love; Robin D. G. Kelley 13. Nettle Soup; Bruce McLeod PART III: WALLACE IN HER OWN WORDS 1. "Strange Times" 2. Seven Poems 3. "Let the Right One In" 4. Manifesto 5. "We Are Also Each Other" 6. "The Fish Story" 7. The Tal Pidae Lehrstücke 8. "On Writing as Transgression"

Editorial Reviews

"A crucial and long overdue study of one of the fiercest, most poetic and sensual voices that the American theatre has ever produced. A book that celebrates Wallace's grace, intellectual wit, and probing intelligence." - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

". . . This volume analyzes and celebrates the playwright's many achievements . . . Throughout the book, Wallace is compared to Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Jane Austen, W.B. Yeats, Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bruce Springsteen. This list is a testament to the playwright as well as to those who generated it - the astute, diverse, impassioned writers who recognize and relish the prismatic spectrum that is Naomi Wallace . . . Wallace's own bibliographies . . . send their readers on historical and philosophical journeys. The editors and contributors of The Theatre of Naomi Wallace have extended such journeys into a collective pilgrimage, paying homage to an extraordinary playwright with an extraordinary book." - Modern Drama

From the Publisher