The Form Is The Content: Performing Race In David Henry Hwang's Unrealistic Theatre

From the 1960 s onwards,Asian American theatre has served as a powerful vehicle to articulate and stage in-between life experiences of Asian Americans.In the course of its development,David Henry Hwang has come into prominence and made ever-lasting contributions to this particular genre of theatre.He is a Tony Award-winner and three-time nominee,a three-time Obie Award-winner,and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.His plays have caught a wide range of scholars' attention,and engendered great controversies as well.Reflecting on the existing domestic and overseas scholarship,however,it has the following problems:1)the research scope is limited,and too much stress is put on Hwang's M.Butterfly;2)research approaches tend to be repetitive;3)thematic interpretations overshadow theatrical studies of Hwang's plays;4)racial issues tend to be neutralized;and 5)the link between dramatic concerns and theatrical aesthetics is severed.In view of these problems,this dissertation,covering Hwang's oeuvre,examines the link between Hwang's unrealistic theatrical aesthetics and his dramatic concern of racial performativity.The dissertation consists of five chapters.Starting from Chapter One,which serves as an introduction to present literature review,research objectives,methodology,theoretical framework and structure of this dissertation,Chapters Two,Three and Four examine Hwang's plays from three dimensions: unnatural narrative,metadramatic structure and heterotopic stage space,respectively.Chapter Two,referring to the parameters used to define unnatural narrative,namely,narrator,character,time and space,illustrates the manifestations of unnatural narrative in Hwang's plays,and thus reveals its function of disrupting the coherence of racial discourses.It is argued that unreliable narrators,perpetuators of racism,expose the practice of racial performativity;anti-realistic characters stage the fluidity of identity by performing multiple roles;inserted flashbacks and memories disrupt master narratives of race;and anti-mimetic spaces create a color-blind communitas by collapsing fixed spatial confines,where the homogeneity of race is replaced by multiplicity and heterogeneity.Chapter Three approaches Hwang's plays from a metadramatic lens.It examines three major metadramatic devices manifest in his theatrical works: the play within the play,role playing within the role and self-reference.It is revealed that Hwang's metadramatic devices work in tandem to generate estrangement,and then disrupt the dramatic illusion,an accomplice in the process of consolidating racial and gender norms.Meanwhile,these devices are shown to alter the audience's habitual way of viewing race,the essentialist view in particular.Chapter Four introduces the term “heterotopia”,and examines how Hwang creates a racial heterotopia through hybrid stage spaces.Framed with Michel Foucault's identification of the heterotopia and following Joanne Tompkins' s heterotopic analytical framework for theatre,it examines the productions of Hwang's plays from a heterotopic lens.This chapter shifts from page to stage,and shows that heterotopic stage spaces in the performances of Hwang's plays,expanding and restructuring the fixed spatiality,stage possibilities of setting up a color-blind communitas,where regardless of skin color,a communal sense is experienced.Chapter Five is a natural conclusion drawn on the basis of detailed analyses in previous three chapters.It reiterates that Hwang's unrealistic theatrical aesthetics serves well for him to express his insistence on the performative nature of race and his rejection of the practice of racial performativity.Meanwhile,it presents theoretical and practical contributions the dissertation might make,as well as its limitations,which serve as a departure for further studies of Hwang's theatrical aesthetics.