The goal of this thesis is to explore African American theatre through the lens of performativity and to show how the performative concepts of passing and entrenchment affected the writing of African American playwrights in the 1950s and 1960s. To this end, the first part of the work is focused on establishing performativity as a concept, starting with its origins in linguistics and then tracing its development. The main influences for this section are the works of Judith Butler, Nadine Ehlers, Andrew Parker and Eve Sedgewick. Butler's work on performativity is used as the main source for understanding performativity in its contemporary sense and to establish "passing" as a performative act. Ehlers' work serves to connect performativity to race and to show the use of "entrenchment" in performativity. Finally, Parker and Sedgewick's work provides a bridge between performativity and theatrical performance as they describe the "relations of spectatorship" necessary for the existence of theatre. Since performativity, in theatre or anywhere else, is based on discourse, the thesis will show the images and relations of spectatorship that defined African American theatre and performance since its inception. These include slave performance, black minstrelsy, but also the first attempts at quintessentially...
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:404468 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Polák, Ondřej |
| Contributors | Wallace, Clare, Ulmanová, Hana |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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