Ryan Claycomb's monograph provides a comprehensive overview of the work of significant feminist playwrights in the 1990s. Claycomb begins his study with the controversy surrounding the 1998 Supreme Court case against the NEA Four (specifically the performances of Holly Hughes and Karen Finley). Divided into two sections, the book first examines feminist playwrights and performance artists who create autobiographical work (including Hughes, Finley, Orlan and Kate Bornstein). Part II considers feminist biographical plays based on historical figures, such as Hélène Cixous's Portrait of Dora and Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus.
While the title suggests the goal of examining feminist performances onstage, in fact Claycomb provides literary-critical analyses of plays and performances. His introduction outlines a detailed theoretical framework, beginning with a discussion of semiotics and theatre inspired by Judith Butler and J. L. Austin, among others. Using a diagram that recalls Richard Schechner's mapping of performance theory, Claycomb illustrates his dialectical approach to feminist epistemology by charting interrelationships between his key concepts. Tropes of identity, narrative, history, body, voice and community are considered crucial to an understanding of what he refers to as feminist ‘life writing’.
The six chapters (plus a brief conclusion) are densely packed with feminist criticism and literature. This exhaustive literature review threatens at times to overshadow Claycomb's own perspective. Although he mentions working as a dramaturge in feminist theatre, his experiences as a feminist theatre spectator/critic are absent. Elements of ‘body’ and ‘voice’, although included in his diagram and theoretical discourse, are relatively sparse: with a few exceptions (e.g. Rebecca Schneider's oft-cited comments on Annie Sprinkle (p. 35), and Terry Galloway's thoughts on her ‘embodiedness’ (p. 87)), close readings of these elements in relation to live performances and performers are often missing. Similarly, analyses of audience reception and meanings of ‘community’ in the context of specific feminist performances are lacking.
Chapter three features a smart critique of Sarah Kane's final work, 4.48 Psychosis, as Claycomb situates the ‘autobiographical’ section of his book and asserts his place in the controversy surrounding the play. He reads Kane's play as expressing the ‘I/Not I’ subject position, a ‘countermonologue’ that reflects ‘the fragmented multiplicity of the self’ (pp. 106, 107). He stresses the need ‘not to reduce the work or the life to mere metonymies of one another but rather to recognize and honor the absolute risk inherent in delivering this script in concert with the taking of her own life’ (p. 111). This writing is the book's strongest – sharp, clear and jargon-free, with a compelling argument.
Claycomb ends his book with the observation that the eight years following 1998 were inexplicably lacklustre in the realm of feminist and queer theatre, especially compared with the resounding ‘boom’ that he addresses in his compendium of the work of feminist artists and scholars at the end of the millennium. Yet he concludes by expressing hope for a new ‘vitality’ in radical feminist performance, driven by innovations on the global stage.
