FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2020168910> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2020168910 endingPage "149" @default.
• W2020168910 startingPage "147" @default.
• W2020168910 abstract "Reviewed by: Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance Meenakshi Ponnuswami Lynette Goddard . Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. ix + 229. $74.95 (Hb). Lynette Goddard's book is a welcome addition to a growing body of scholarly work on black and Asian theatre in Britain. It is the second monograph on the subject to have been published in recent years, the first being Gabriele Griffin's 2003 survey, Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain (Cambridge UP). Staging Black Feminisms is similarly focused upon the work of women playwrights, and Goddard, like Griffin, covers an impressive range of materials, including unpublished plays and fringe performances. Goddard is more specifically concerned with black playwrights since the 1980s, particularly those of African-Caribbean descent. She is also more polemical in her approach. At the outset, she offers a set of guidelines for studying the work of black women playwrights. Observing that [End Page 147] black women's very presence in the British theatre industry is seen to constitute some sort of feminist intervention (3), Goddard emphasizes that not all black women are feminist and argues that more specific analytical criteria must be applied to distinguish actively interventionist plays from those that are not necessarily speaking to feminist agendas (4). Goddard also points out that plenty of stereotypical and simplistic representations find their way into plays by black women, in part because of the predominant expectations of the white-led theatre industry and its audiences (10) and in part because of the bourgeois feminist sensibilities of some black women playwrights themselves (32). The task of the feminist scholar, then, should be to interrogate more fully and critically the scope and nature of feminist concerns in black women's performance. Rather than dwelling on insufficiently feminist work, however, Goddard privileges writers and performers she feels have significantly challenged standard perceptions and depictions of black women: those who have deconstructed prevailing ideas about gender, race and sexuality, offering alternatives to the so-called 'norms,' and who have aid[ed] substantially in the production of new meanings (54). Goddard is particularly concerned about the pervasive exclusion of lesbian characters and experience, which she argues has reified heterosexuality as the dominant and authentic mode of black womanhood (6): [T]he epitome of the challenge to create innovative and progressive black performances involves a more substantial objection to the fundamental, deepest inset and most pervasive of institutional values – heterosexuality – which will lead to the production of a wider range of black female subjectivities as viable positions (7). Accordingly, works about lesbians, such as Jacqueline Rudet's Basin (1985), Adeola Agbebiyi's Four Women (1996), and the work of lesbian writers such as Jackie Kay and Valerie Mason-John, receive particular attention. (Ironically, however, the back cover does not include lesbianism in its list of the book's key themes.) Goddard aligns herself with feminist critiques of realism, such as those of Sue-Ellen Case and Jeanie Forte, arguing in the chapter Black Feminist Performance Aesthetics that [p]lays presented with an awareness of content and form (in which category she includes non-naturalistic performance as well as live arts and performance poetry) seem to hold the greatest possibilities for conceiving black women differently (53). At the same time, Goddard's discussions of the plays indicate some flexibility and nuance in her approach to realism; her perceptive reading of Rudet's Basin, for example, outlines the ways in which the play defies heteronormative assumptions while apparently working within the realist confines of the love story. Goddard's criticism of Winsome Pinnock's work is also thought provoking. While she argues that Pinnock's work is less conventionally realist than it initially seems, she contends that Pinnock relies on stock character types and that her work is tailored to fit mainstream perspectives (80–81). Indeed, Goddard's study suggests that real feminist [End Page 148] interventions are difficult to achieve under the aegis of the subsidized theatres, where, usually, radical views and formal innovation are sacrificed in the interests of appealing to the mainstream. Writing of performance art, dance and poetry in the penultimate chapter, she provocatively concludes that working outside the confines..." @default.
• W2020168910 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2020168910 creator A5004132232 @default.
• W2020168910 date "2008-01-01" @default.
• W2020168910 modified "2023-09-25" @default.
• W2020168910 title "<i>Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance</i> (review)" @default.
• W2020168910 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/mdr.0.0025" @default.
• W2020168910 hasPublicationYear "2008" @default.
• W2020168910 type Work @default.
• W2020168910 sameAs 2020168910 @default.
• W2020168910 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W2020168910 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2020168910 hasAuthorship W2020168910A5004132232 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C104317684 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C107038049 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C107993555 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C185592680 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C190475667 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C2775969163 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C2777688943 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C2778355321 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C2909534802 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C55493867 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C56273599 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C74916050 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C104317684 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C107038049 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C107993555 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C142362112 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C144024400 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C17744445 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C185592680 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C190475667 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C199539241 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C2775969163 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C2777688943 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C2778355321 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C2909534802 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C55493867 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C56273599 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C74916050 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C94625758 @default.
• W2020168910 hasConceptScore W2020168910C95457728 @default.
• W2020168910 hasIssue "1" @default.
• W2020168910 hasLocation W20201689101 @default.
• W2020168910 hasOpenAccess W2020168910 @default.
• W2020168910 hasPrimaryLocation W20201689101 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W1201669747 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W1999177907 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2086428225 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2295920066 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2333849857 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2482321874 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2775056745 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W2884164797 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W4237553826 @default.
• W2020168910 hasRelatedWork W805080090 @default.
• W2020168910 hasVolume "51" @default.
• W2020168910 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2020168910 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2020168910 magId "2020168910" @default.
• W2020168910 workType "article" @default.