Consuming Performances
Eating Acts and Feminist Embodiment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14997188 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marcy J Epstein, Marcy Epstein (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 20 |
| Publication date | 1996-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | TDR/The Drama Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1054-2043 • E-ISSN: 1531-4715 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1146588 |
| OpenAlex | W2328234607 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 2 |
In June 1994, Ann Arbor-based performance troupes Walk 'n' Squawk and Janet Lilly and Company converged on theme as well as performance. Big Girls (1994), title that invokes Lilly's childhood nickname (Big Janet) as well as the choreographer's shapely postpartum figure, showcases her intrepid female body in romance with embodiment. Lilly's body, reflecting maternal ideal, suggests contrast between the female body as we imagine it-feeding others, inhabiting the feminine space of the symbolic mother-and the body which imagines and nurtures itself. Big Girls describes bodies not only big in size, but also big on embodiment itself, with its precarious, gestational connection to full-grown womanhood. A woman who chews gum between dance movements and bares lactating breasts, Lilly reappropriates the grandeur of flesh, thematizing the desire to be body in sequence with the pleasures of having one.2 One sequence in this venture into womanhood-Hilary Ramsden's comic monolog Kentucky Fried3-redirects her representation of female embodiment from idealized bodies to real ones, with peculiar twist. Exploring gest, food, and-as she terms it-a geography of identity, Ramsden frenetically plays out her cultural dislocation in the tangible terms of fast food consumption-a heady commentary on American eating. Deluged (by industrial-garbage-binand-apron-clad Lilly) with hundreds of McDonald's and Burger King buns, and chewing over how and why Americans would want to eat a bucket of anything (1994), Ramsden gags herself with patty buns. Her pleasure and disgust over American mass consumerism parallel her compulsion to enjoy something forbidden to women onstage: something to eat. Like Lucille Ball on bad day at the confection assembly line, Ramsden talks and gorges, grimaces and ingratiates, until, in hysterical animation, her eyes bulge, her voice cracks. She absentmindedly backs off from the audience, falls into the
Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Disgust · Fantasy · Literature · Pleasure · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2024 (17) |
| Highly cited | No |