Constructing Voices is a narrative case study exploring the experiences of young women as they participated in a major public art performance project. I followed the process and production of Turning Point and Under Construction over the course of one year. Under the direction of American performance artist and educator Suzanne Lacy, this Vancouver, Canada based art project and performance sought to empower participating young women; to help them fin their voice and to provide them with a forum so that they might challenge and alter public perception and stereotypes of young women in the mass media. Seven young women from Turning Point and three local organizers, including the project and performance producer, have offered their narratives to inform this study. Together, they take us behind the scenes of a huge and complex community art project and performance. Their stories help us find meaning amidst the contradictions inherent in art productions of this magnitude. I approach this inquiry from a constructivist paradigm, informed by postmodern feminism. Through this research I call for a collaborative art practice which is reflexive, critical and egalitarian - one in which power is shared and where representation is determined by those whose lives are displayed. To inform our future artistic and educational practices, we need to turn to those pedagogical frameworks that best correspond to the intended goals of the projects. In the case of Turning Point and Under Construction, we need to look to feminist, emancipatory and performance art pedagogies. Only by informing our practices in this way, can these projects provide the opportunity for individuals to achieve a heightened engagement with their world - to learn through currere. In this narrative case study, we hear from young women at turning points in their lives. They believe what they say has value and should be heard by others. Performance art has the potential to be a rich site for learning so long as the process is congruent with the goals of the art project. As art educators we can respond to these narratives in our practices by providing environments for learning where participants/learners can find their own ideas and voices while expressing themselves in personally meaningful ways.

Thesis (M.A.)--Dalhousie University, 1997. / Title from PDF t.p. (Library and Archives Canada, viewed on Oct. 9, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-151).

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In this thesis I investigate the theoretical or philosophical notion/archetype of the Dionysian in relation to the transgressive female body in performance. I do so through 1) an investigation into the theories behind the Dionysian and the transgressive; 2) an examination of the performative practice of the transgressive female body; and 3) a personal exploration of the theatrical practice. 1) In the first chapter I introduce and thoroughly explore the archetypal concept of the Dionysian, and identify its significance because of its intrinsic association with the transgressive. I associate it with its oppositional force, the Apollonian, which is similarly significant because it is through the Dionysian disruption of the Apollonian from which the very notion of the transgressive springs. Through a review of Camille Paglia's seminal text on the subject of the Dionysian¹, this chapter provides a historical, mythological and theoretical context for the schism between the two archetypal aesthetics, starting from the description of the mythology of the ancient Greek gods, Dionysus and Apollo, and unpacks the transgressive nature of the Dionysian. Drawing on concurring theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Julia Kristeva, as well as Hans Thies-Lehmann's writings on post-dramatic theatre², Chapter One attempts to firmly establish the inherent link between the Dionysian and theatre and performance, as well as the Dionysian and the transgressive, and provide a thorough theoretical framework for the rest of the thesis. 2) The second chapter investigates the work of two female performance artists³ who (re)present⁴ their bodies as transgressive in performance, namely Marina Abramovic and Karen Finley. It critically examines specific performance works of theirs, and through this examination it explores how they (re)present their bodies as transgressive in performance, and why they do so. This chapter furthermore establishes the connection between the transgressive female performing body, as (re)presented by Abramovic and Finley, and the Dionysian. In so doing it explores how they negotiate this ancient aesthetic or practice in a contemporary performance context. I believe that these performance artists are in fact striving to celebrate and reclaim the Dionysian within their work, and I attempt to establish this within this chapter. 3) The third chapter of this thesis analyses my own practical exploration of the transgressive female body in performance in a piece entitled Bleeding Mermaid (2008). It examines this exploration in the context of the theory of the Dionysian, as well as investigating how and why I (re)presented my body as transgressive in the performance. The analysis furthermore questions how I understand my work on the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in relation to, and within the context of, Finley and Abramovic's work on the same subject. Through this investigation, I aim to establish a link between the Dionysian and the transgressive female performing body; and investigate the motivation(s) behind the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in performance. I hope to open up a pathway to the reclamation of the Dionysian, both in performance practice and research. ¹Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. England: Penguin Books, 1990. ²Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. and Intro. Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. ³Performance Art began around the 1960s in Europe and America. It is performance with a sense of immediacy – in that it is hard to replicate as it interacts with each unique audience – it is thus effectively a fresh/new experience each time. It breaks the boundaries of traditional theatre (form, structure, venue, time etc) and is often shocking or provocative in nature. It mixed the aesthetics of theatre and art, often taking place in installation settings. Performance Art has developed and morphed throughout the years, and is also referred to as Live Art in Britain. A performance artist is someone who produces performance art. It is possible that Performance Art no longer exists/is possible because it no longer shocks or affects the audience. ⁴My use of the brackets in (re)presented/(re)present throughout this thesis is because I would like to make simultaneous reference to the words/connotations of "presentation" and "representation", without being bound to the connotations of illusion/falseness/non-reality as is associated with the word "representation" (in opposition to the concept of the "real"), and thus be left only with the one-dimensional approach/meaning of "presentation".

Constructing Voices is a narrative case study exploring the experiences of young women as they participated in a major public art performance project. I followed the process and production of Turning Point and Under Construction over the course of one year. Under the direction of American performance artist and educator Suzanne Lacy, this Vancouver, Canada based art project and performance sought to empower participating young women; to help them fin their voice and to provide them with a forum so that they might challenge and alter public perception and stereotypes of young women in the mass media. Seven young women from Turning Point and three local organizers, including the project and performance producer, have offered their narratives to inform this study. Together, they take us behind the scenes of a huge and complex community art project and performance. Their stories help us find meaning amidst the contradictions inherent in art productions of this magnitude. I approach this inquiry from a constructivist paradigm, informed by postmodern feminism. Through this research I call for a collaborative art practice which is reflexive, critical and egalitarian - one in which power is shared and where representation is determined by those whose lives are displayed. To inform our future artistic and educational practices, we need to turn to those pedagogical frameworks that best correspond to the intended goals of the projects. In the case of Turning Point and Under Construction, we need to look to feminist, emancipatory and performance art pedagogies. Only by informing our practices in this way, can these projects provide the opportunity for individuals to achieve a heightened engagement with their world - to learn through currere. In this narrative case study, we hear from young women at turning points in their lives. They believe what they say has value and should be heard by others. Performance art has the potential to be a rich site for learning so long as the process is congruent with the goals of the art project. As art educators we can respond to these narratives in our practices by providing environments for learning where participants/learners can find their own ideas and voices while expressing themselves in personally meaningful ways. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 223 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-223). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

This project charts two tandem phenomena in late modern Britain: the emergence of a new mode of political theatre that I term “claustrophobic dramaturgy” and the growth of the carceral state. Through close textual analysis, performance reconstruction, and archival research, I demonstrate how two generations of feminist playwrights have honed and exchanged a complement of narrative and/or theatrical strategies which stage their dramatic protagonists as entrapped. These literal representations of confinement work to suggest more abstract, structural modes of confinement, including criminalized social identities, punitive public policies, and new carceral technologies. I draw together a surprising constellation of plays, produced since 1979, and united by a common investigation of the impacts of privatization and austerity on British state institutions. Chapter 1 identifies social housing plays as a distinct sub-genre of British social realism. This sub-genre reveals how, as social housing became increasingly residualized, social renters were subjected to increasing state surveillance. Chapter 2 extends overdue critical attention to Clean Break Theatre Company, which has, since 1979, dedicated its entire oeuvre to the topic of women’s incarceration. Chapter 3 investigates theatre’s surprising preoccupation with psychiatric hospitals in the midst of broadscale deinstitutionalization and funding cuts to the mental health sector. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the conjunction of Shakespeare adaptation and claustrophobic dramaturgy, both to reveal how carceral logics are embedded in the Shakespeare texts themselves and to demonstrate the new political dramaturgy’s saturation of British theatre culture. To the field of theatre studies, this project advances a critical reevaluation of late modern and contemporary British theatre history. While Socialist theatre often has been characterized as the province of a white boys’ club of the 1970s, I demonstrate how women playwrights take up this Socialist mantle to decry the carceral consequences of dismantling the welfare state. Case studies of plays by Black British playwrights are central to each chapter, weaving the history of Afrodiasporic theatre in the UK into the heart of my account of dramaturgical innovation. This project also offers one of the earliest examinations of professional theatre guided by questions and insights from the growing, multi-disciplinary field of carceral studies. If, as carceral studies scholars assert, the carceral is an ever moving and expanding target, we, as audiences and scholars, can look to claustrophobic dramaturgy to illuminate new carceral incursions on civic life and institutions.