VIRGIN AND WHORE NO MORE: REINVENTIONS OF THE MYTHICAL MATERNAL IN CHICANA DRAMA 1965-2000

This dissertation examines reimaginings of the mythical maternal in the developing Chicana feminist theatre from 1965 through the end of the 20th century. It first explores the mythical and historical roots of the figures of Gloria Anzaldúa’s tres madres: the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Malinche, and La Llorona; as well as Nahua goddesses including Coatlicue and Tonantzín. In doing so, it highlights various scenarios of motherhood deployed within the colonial context and within the Chicano nationalist movement, each of which has been used to define and constrain Chicana woman- and motherhood. It then chronicles some of the efforts of Chicana feminists within and at the fringes of the movement to contest and revise these scenarios of motherhood as they were reproduced on the Chicano stage in the 1960s and 1970s. By the late 1980s, after the publication of Borderlands: La Frontera, and thanks in large part to the mentorship of Maria Irene Fornes, more individually-written Chicana plays began to appear on US stages. These plays, including Simply Maria or the American Dream by Josefina Lopez, My Visits with MGM (My Grandmother Marta) by Edit Villareal, and The Fat-Free Chicana and the Snow Cap Queen by Elaine Romero, often deployed comedy to explore the experience of individual Chicanas coming of age on the physical and cultural border between the US and Mexico. As the turn of the century approached, Chicana playwrights expanded their dramatic vision from the experience of the individual Chicana in the present to a perspective that encompassed the past, present, and even the imagined future. In doing this, playwrights like Cherríe Moraga and Josefina López confronted issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the deployment of mythical mothers in tragic formations