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Belle Reprieve: Self-conscious Survey on Sex, Gender and Performance

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2008, 21(3), pp.119-149
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Yoon Bang-sil 1

1관동대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The four co-authors of Belle Reprieve, all of them being homo-sexual, insist that sex and gender are neither inborn nor essential but changeable and performative. In their work, the authors and actors set up a dramatic frame with Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar named Desire, its adapted black-and-white film directed by Elia Kazan and their own homo-sexuality, in which lie multiple layers with gaps between them. Overlapped or paralleled, those gaps make sharp differences, thereby leading the audience to sober consideration of sex and gender. Their intention is a dramatic scheme to create a Brecht-like 'critical distancing.' Based on the confessions and experiences of the actors themselves, the authors try to reveal the unstably changing gender and subjectivity and show the resultant change of desire. To maximize the dramatic effect, they use the techniques of cross-gender casting and cross-dressing. Dealing with the issues of sex and gender, the playwrights also use ‘realism’ as important elements both in form and idea. In contents, they oppose to realism while, in form, they adopt a post-modern way of playwrighting as against a realistic approach. Realism is significant in this work in two ways; First, the work is directly related to post-modern deconstruction and reconstruction of gender, which defies realism. Moreover, realism has its own limit of seeing the characteristics of individuals as essential, thus restricting their choices and predetermining their potentials for change and development. Second, the authors partially use some realistic elements but, in the end, reconstruct the work in post-modern ways. After all, the audience meet with some differences between words and deeds and witness changing gender within an individual. Thus, they come to realize the falsification, changeability and performance of gender. They are also brought to believe that the distinction between men and women, their bodies and physical images, and the concept of sex and gender are changing and reconstructing themselves in accordance with the cultural and social ideologies of the times, and are never absolutely fixed. To co-authors, their homo-sexual identity is not only a way of communicating with the world but a means to realize their belief in the role of theatre in creating positive social changes.

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