| Chamber Theatre by Robert Breen is a foundational text within the field of performance studies. Based on pedagogical experimentation at Northwestern University, Breen's technique combines the strengths of narrative and drama. It is a practical and theoretical guide for creating performance that delineates a technique for the scripting and staging of literature. In this study, I propose to explicate the interdisciplinary richness and political potential that this technique offers feminist performance praxis. I argue that attention to semiotic methodology may expand the material and strategies from which feminist performance is created. This study articulates the convergences of oral interpretation scholarship, poststructuralist theory and feminist performance praxis in order to identify feminist theatrical adaptation as a critical reading practice and a performative writing practice.; Through close reading, case study and feminist critique, I outline the benefits of recuperating Chamber Theatre. In this effort, I employ the interpretive and methodological insights of poststructuralist theory and feminist literary criticism for several key purposes: to complicate and enrich Breen's notion of the subject; to formulate alternative mechanisms for the representation of female subjectivity; to advocate for the role of the narrator as an occupation rather than personification; to politicize the literary construct, point-of-view; to emphasize the politics of location and context; and, finally, to incorporate Brechtian politics within Chamber Theatre. Mobilizing the concept of performativity--in particular, the notions of cultural quotation, citationality and repetition--I cathect gender representation and theatrical representation, clarifying a theoretically based, pedagogically oriented, feminist Chamber Theatre method.; I foresee several contributions this dissertation grants to current performance studies scholarship: further documentation of an important, historically interdisciplinary tradition, the expansion of textual material and methodological strategies for feminist performance praxis, an application of literary criticism to performance scholarship and, finally, a discussion of performance that embraces the alliance of, rather than the opposition between, the various approaches that compose the field of performance studies. |
