Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts - Softcover

6 x 9 trim. 7 illus. LC 92-11968

"Gender is performance," declares editor Senelick in the introduction, and the best essays in this collection are those that challenge cultural assumptions about representations of gender in art and life. Subjects range from Annie Oakley, Isadora Duncan, and turn-of-the-century transvestite star Julian Eltinge, through sexual role-playing in Balinese and Iranian folk theater, to how issues of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny are dealt with in the works of Robert Wilson, Kate Bornstein, The Omaha Magic Theatre, and Theatre du Soleil. Many of the pieces are simply ethnographic or historical reports, some of marginal interest. The few, however, that venture into original thought, such as John Preston's analysis of the gay male sex club The Mineshaft and Morris Meyer's deconstruction of transsexual surgery as theatrical event, are astonishing and exciting. For academically oriented performing arts, women's, and gay studies collections.
- Anne Sharp, Ypsilanti Dist. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.