Sue-Ellen Case

A valuable, provoking, important addition to any theatre scholar or practitioner's library, especially since feminist theory is a relative newcomer to the world of theatre.

Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre

Performing Feminisms

Performing Feminisms is the first book to bring together theoretical works on the theater written from a feminist perspective. This pioneering work uses feminist critical theory, as it have been applied to fiction and the cinema, to explore dramatic tests and performances. In an introductory essay, Sue-Ellen case provides an overview of the intersection between feminist critical theory and theater in the 1980s. The contributors consider a wide range of themes and strategies—psychoanalytic theory, Lacanian criticism, socialist feminism, lesbianism, history, even the folk theory of Aunt Jemima. Among the contributors, Teresa de Lauretis examines sexual indifference and lesbian representation. Elin Diamond and Sharon Willis use Lacan to dismantle notions of identity. Glenda Dickerson explores womanist attitudes in African-American theater. Yvonne Yarbo-Bejarano discusses the female subject in Chicago theater. Judith Butler destabilizes gender identity in her analysis of the performative act. The writers consider differences across time—from Shakespeare to contemporary performance art—and across ethnic and class boundaries. The feminist critical practices of the 1980s present a challenge to women's studies and theater studies in the 1990s. Performing Feminisms introduces a relatively new field, one sure to provoke discussion in both disciplines.

Sue-Ellen Case is arguably the most influential and significant scholar in feminist and queer theatre studies. This collection brings together her most important writing. Framing this with new introductory material, Sue-Ellen Case will contextualise her work within broader developments in critical theory and feminist / lesbian studies.

Critical Strategies

Feminist and Queer Performance

Janelle G. Reinelt

Recently in the field of theatre studies there has been an increasing amount of debate and dissonance regarding the borders of its territory, its methodologies, subject matter, and scholarly perspectives. The nature of this debate could be termed "political" and, in fact, concerns "the performance of power"—the struggle over power relations embedded in texts, methodologies, and the academy itself. This striking new collection of nineteen divergent essays represents this performance of power and the way in which the recent convergence of new critical theories with historical studies has politicized the study of the theatre. Neither play text, performance, nor scholarship and teaching can safely reside any longer in the "free," politically neutral, self-signifying realm of the aesthetic. Politicizing theatrical discourse means that both the hermeneutics and the histories of theatre reveal the role of ideology and power dynamics. New strategies and concepts—and a vital new phase of awareness—appear in these illuminating essays. A variety of historical periods, from the Renaissance through the Victorian and up to the most contemporary work of the Wooster group, illustrate the ways in which contemporary strategies do not require contemporary texts and performances but can combine with historical methods and subjects to produce new theatrical discourse.

Theatrical Discourse and Politics

The Performance of Power

The Domain-Matrix is about the passage from print culture to electronic screen culture and how this passage affects the reader or computer user. Sections are organized to emulate, in a printed book, the reader's experience of computer windows. Case traces the portrait of virtual identities within queer and lesbian critical practice and virtual technologies. The book poses several key questions: How do the competing orders of print and the screen situate the body? How do they treat notions of the "live"? Written to encourage a reading strategy somewhere between print and hypertext, the book is divided into sections which prompt the reader to link them in non-sequential orders.

Performing Lesbian at the End of Print Culture

The Domain-matrix

This classic study is both an introduction to, and an overview of, the relationship between feminism and theatre.

Feminism and Theatre

"This book demonstrates Case’s continued dominance of the field of lesbian performance studies.... Case’s dense, rich, and complex work very likely will be a central text for anyone interested in debating the changing theoretical landscape for performance studies and queer theory. All readers interested in what the future might hold for scholarship in the humanities should study Case’s thought-provoking work, which is an essential addition to any college or university’s collection." —Choice "... this is a book that is enormously provocative, that will make you think and feel connected with the latest speculation on the implications of the electronic age we inhabit." —Lesbian Review of Books "... definitely required reading for any future-thinking lesbian." —Lambda Book Report The Domain-Matrix is about the passage from print culture to electronic screen culture and how this passage affects the reader or computer user. Sections are organized to emulate, in a printed book, the reader’s experience of computer windows. Case traces the portrait of virtual identities within queer and lesbian critical practice and virtual technologies.

The Domain-Matrix

This impressive new book from Sue-Ellen Case looks at how science has been performed throughout history, tracing a line from nineteenth century alchemy to the twenty-first century virtual avatar. In this bold and wide-ranging book that is written using a crossbreed of styles, we encounter a glance of Edison in his laboratory, enter the soundscape of John Cage and raid tombs with Lara Croft. Case looks at the intersection of science and performance, the academic treatment of classical plays and internet-like bytes on contemporary issues and experiments where the array of performances include: electronic music Sun Ra, the jazz musician the recursive play of tape from Samuel Beckett to Pauline Oliveros Performing Science and the Virtual reviews how well these performances borrow from spiritualist notions of transcendence, as well as the social codes of race, gender and economic exchange. This book will appeal to academics and graduates studying theatre and performance studies, cultural studies and philosophy.

Performing Science and the Virtual

The Split Britches theatre company have led the way in innovative and challenging lesbian performance for the last decade. Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance is a long awaited celebration of the theatre and writing of Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw and Deborah Margolin, who make up this outstanding troupe. This unique anthology comes complete with: * seven of Split Britches' best loved performance texts * a critical, historical introduction by Sue-Ellen Case * programme notes to accompany each of the plays * a range of stunning photographic illustrations The publication of the Split Britches play texts, collected here for the first time, provides invaluable access to these celebrated performance pieces for both the student and contemporary arts audience.

Sue-Ellen Case

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