The female spectator as subject in contemporary British drama

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis examines female spectatorial positions implied in the texts of some contemporary British plays. Following materialist feminist notions of the processes whereby the female subject is constituted, this study explores the ways in which specific dramaturgical and theatrical forms contribute to such processes particularly through their capacity to replicate, foreground, or reconfigure ideological discourses and practices. The analyses of the texts identify the nature of the female positions that are inscribed in the texts and made available to the spectator. Chapter One provides a theoretical account of the concepts involved in the terms female, spectator, and subject. Chapter Two analyzes contemporary uses of realism in Jacqueline Rudet's 'Basin' and Christina Reid's 'The Belle of the Belfast City'. It observes the role that a predominance of realist patterns (as described by Catherine Belsey) and co-existing non-realist elements have in the determination of spectatorial positions. Chapter Three looks at feminist adaptations of Brechtian techniques in Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls' and Sarah Daniels' ' Beside Herself' in their capacity to provide and encourage historically grounded re-readings and re-writings of women's conditions. Chapter Four explores the function of the different aesthetic and stylistic forms utilized in Tash Fairbank's 'Pulp' and Jackie Kay's 'Chiaroscuro ' to articulate what Teresa de Lauretis has called an eccentric subject position, a position attained through personal and political practices and excessive to hegemonic socio-cultural discourses. The Epilogue briefly comments on the areas of production and reception as sites in which meanings, such as those identified in the historical readings of the plays, can be unfixed, problematized, recovered, or negotiated. The construction of the female spectatorial positions observed in these texts is thus set within a wider context that can also significantly contribute to the creation and recreation of positions for women as heterogeneous social subjects.Ph.D