LAUGHING LESBIANS: CAMP, SPECTATORSHIP, AND CITIZENSHIP by RA,CHEL KINSrvlAN STECK A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Theater Arts and the Graduate School of the L'ni\'crsity of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements. for thc degree of Doctor of Philosophy IvIarch 201 0 11 University of Oregon Graduate School Confirmation of Approval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by: Rachel Steck Title: "Laughing Lesbians: Camp, Spectatorship, and Citizenship" This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Theater Arts by: John Schmor, Chairperson, Theater Arts Sara Freeman, Member, Theater Arts Theresa May, Member, Theater Arts Ellen Scott, Outside Member, Sociology and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies/Dean of the Graduate School for the University of Oregon. March 20, 2010 Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of Oregon Libraries. ? 2010 Rachel Kinsman Steck ill lV An Abstract of the Dissertation of Rachel Kinsman Steck in the Department of Theater Arts for the degree of to be taken Doctor of Philosophy March 2010 Title: LAUGHING LESBIANS: CAMP, SPECTATORSHIP, AND CITIZENSHIP Approved: Dr. John B. Schmor This study, set in the context of the feminist sex wars, explores the performances of Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Split Britches throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The purpose of this study is to better understand the implications of a specific style of lesbian comedic performance, found at the WOW Cafe and defined here as lesbian camp, throughout a contentious era in feminist politics. The motivating questions for this study are: How can a performance inspire an activated spectatorship? How have lesbian comedic performance practices provoked feminist theory and practice? Chapter II defmes lesbian camp and attempts to trace a dialogue among lesbian performance critics and academics ruminating over lesbian camp and its existence. It also explores lesbian camp's relationship to drag and butch-femme as well as how lesbian camp functions within specific performances of Holly Hughes, Split Britches, and Carmelita Tropicana. vChapter III argues that it is the very element of lesbian camp that brings forth the potential for an activated spectatorship. It is a chaotic, unstable environment that exposes and disassembles deep-seated fears, ideals, and practices seemingly inherent, although pragmatically constructed, to our communities and cultures throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. It presents a climate of resistance through the disruption of identificatory practices. This, in turn, provokes an activated spectatorship. Chapter IV examines the effects these artists had on the larger stage of the feminist sex wars and culture wars. Holly Hughes, for example, became a national figure, defunded from the National Endowment for the Arts due to her subject of the queer body, then deemed obscene and pornographic. Split Britches were popularized by feminists in the academy not only for their creative techniques but also for their (de)construction of butch? femme coupling. Carmelita Tropicana brought drag to a whole new level with incorporation of male and female drag into her hybrid performances. V1 CURRICULUM VITAE NAJ\'fE OF AUTHOR: Rachel Irist Lisa Duggan describes the "sex wars" as "a series of bitter political and cultural battles over issues of sexuality [that] convulsed the nation-battles over the regulation of pornography, the scope of legal protections for gay people, the funding of allegedly 'obscene' art, tlle content of safe-sex education, the scope of reproductive freedom for women, the sexual content of public school curricula, and more" (1). 4I grew up during the feminist sex wars and have struggled with my personal identity politics of woman, academic, lesbian, feminist, queer, and artist. This struggle is the motivation behind this dissertation. This struggle has compelled me to wonder if these artists (as well as others like them) were the catalyst for queer theory/practice and third wave feminism (the reconsideration of theory and practice I referred to earlier). \X!ould feminism die, as some have alluded, because of the sex wars?1 Did these lesbian artists participate directly in the discourses of the sex wars? If so, how, and if not, did they int1uence the sex wars? \\lhat has been the influence of these artists since the sex wars? I participate in theater not only as a lighting designer but also as a feminist and qNeeI: 2 I cannot and will not distinguish between myself as an artist, academic, and activist. I prefer to embrace and celebrate the tensions and contradictions that arise from my amalgamation. Therefore, this dissertation, like me, defies stringent categories of theater sntdies, performance studies, gender studies, Icsbian studies, queer theory, history, or literary criticiSl1L It, like the performances it aims to examine, uses and abuses the above-mentioned categories in order to contextualize a little more than a decade of lesbian comedic performance (1982-1994). I The death of feminism has been hotly debated. One of tl1e more recent books published is: Chesler, Phyllis. The Death ~lFeJJliJll:rm: If/Tbat's Next il1 tbe Stmgglefot' f,Fomet1 's Fmdom. New York: Palgrave ;\'facmillan, 2005. 2 The definition of queer is as slippery as its theoretical practices. Queer, for me, disrupts the binaries of categorizations such as hOl11o/hetero, gay/lesbian, and masculine/ feminine. Queer ruptures heteronormativity as "Truth" while focusing on desires and sexuality deemed Other. Lesbian performance critic Jill Dolan states, "ru be queer is not who \'elU art, it's what you do, it's your relation to don1inant power, and your relation to m;lrgl1lal1tY, a, ,I pbce of empowerment" ("Building a Theatrical Yernacular: Responsibility, Community, -\mbIY:ckncc..',nd (~uccr Thcatcr," The ,QIIl't'Il'.l't .~1!1: 8.I'.ray.r 011 I Ji'Jbian and G,!y TI)eater. Ed. AJisa Solomon ;l11d FramJl \hnwalb '(e\v York: '(ew York cr, 20Ci2,) 5, Queer looks for the gaps and contradictions, exposing the non-lJnear and non-hIerarchical nature of power which in turn tends to dIsrupt Identifications. 5\\1hile \\10\\1 performers have certainly influenced performance theory, criticism, and practice throughout the last two decades,3 I have focused this study on the contributions Holly Hughes, Split Britches, and Carmelita Tropicana have made to lesbian comedic performances, lesbian/feminist spectatorship in live performance, and lesbian/feminism in the academy, politics, and culture. I have specifically chosen these artists because I believe (1) they have a significant body of work in the genre of lesbian camp, (2) their scripts are published as \veil as videotaped in performance, (3) I ha\Te been a spectator for at least one of their perfonnances, and (4) the body of their work falls throughout the feminist sex wars (1982 through 1994). Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the performances of Hughes, Split Britches and Tropicana were hotly debated in the academy4 because lesbian subjectivity in performance influenced much of the lesbian performance criticism. In particular, it inflllcnced the ways in which lesbian comedic performances were characterized. The term lesbian camp became problem.atic when, as Kate Davy asked, "how can agency for women be realized representationally in a theatrical configuration that once again, like all hegemonic discourses, privileges the male voice and erases women as speaking subjects" ("Fe/I'vlale Impersonation" 132)? Alternatively, another prominent feminist lesbian performance critic, Sue Ellen Case, stated: The lesbian butch-femme tradition went into the feminist closet. Yet the closet, or the bars, with their hothouse atmosphere have produced what, in combination with 3 See the expansive amount of work written by and about artists like the Five Lesbian Brothers, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Deb Margolin, Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and i'viadeleine Olnek, as well as the women exploring the performances: Kate Davy, Sue Ellen Case, Jill Dolan, "-\lisa Solomon, C. Carr, Lynda Hart, and Peggy Phelan to name a few. 4 In Chapter III, I will discuss one such discourse between critic Sue Ellen Case and Holly Hughes. 6the butch-fernme couple, may provide the liberation of the feminist subject-the discourse of camp.... The closet has given us camp-the style, the discourse, the miJe CIt JCCIle of butch-femme roles ("Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic" 189). It is my contention that lesbian camp is not only possible but thrives well beyond the burch-fclTllTle coupling. I believe that lesbian camp is an important element within lesbian communities because it establishes lesbian subjectivity with or without the burch-femme couple, it disrupts stringent identity categorizations, it is simultaneously celebratory and subversive within the lesbian communities as well as within mainstream heterononnative culture, it forces the audience members to leave their baggage at the door, and it creates an actinlted speeta torship. In Chapter II, I define lesbian camp and attempt to trace a dialogue among lesbian performance critics and academics ruminating over lesbian camp and its existence. I also explore lesbian camp's relationship to drag and butch-fenulle as well as how it functions within specific performances of Holly Hughes, Split Britches, and Carmelita Tropicana. Chapter III argues that it is the very element of lesbian comedic performance-this lesbian camp-that brings forth the potential for an activated spectatorship; that is to say, lesbian camp exposes society's recuperative tools in order to (re)define identity and identity politic. Lesbian camp focuses on the complexity and substantive character of its communities. It is a chaotic, unstable environment that exposes and disassembles deep? seated fears, ideals, and practices seemingly inherent, although pragmatically constructed, to our communities and cultures throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. It presents a climate of reSistance through the disruption of identificatory practices. This, in turn, provokes an activated spectatorship. 7Wrapped up in spectatorship, itself, are the elements of identity politics, subjectivity, wa\'s of looking/sccing/gazing, and cultural conventions, IVIuch of the scholarship on the topic of spectau)rship has revolved around fUm and film theory (think bell hooks, Laura Mulvey, Teresa de Lauretis, and Kaja Silverman). I use some of tum's theories on visual media that incorporate gaze theory and subjectivity to develop the visual vocabulary of lesbian camp and how it collapses the recuperative possibilities of heteronormative culmre, mobilizing the spectators towards critique, celebration, and potentially change. In Chapter III, I explore the methods by which Hughes, Tropicana, and Split Britches create an activated spectatorship and what, if any, role the WOW Cafe played in achieving the effect. Lastly, in Chapter IV, I examine the effects these artists had on the larger stage of the feminist sex wars and culture wars. Holly Hughes, for example, became a national figure, defunded from the National Endowment for the Arts due to her subject of the queer body, then deemed obscene and pornographic. Split Britches were popularized by feminists in the academy not only for their creative techniques but also for their (de)consuuction of butch? femme coupling. Carmelita Tropicana brought drag to a whole new level with incorporation of male and female drag into her hybrid performances. More specifically, I analyze how lesbian performance practices differed from popular theories and (political) methods of feminists during the period. I also explore how these performance practices have provoked feminist theory and practice since then. During the feminist sex wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, communities, organizations, and friends were pressured by feminist organizations to identify with one side or the other: pro-sex versus anti-porn, pro-legalized prostimtion versus anti-prostitution, or pro-sadomasochism (S&M) versus anti-S&M. Was feminism about banning prostitution and 8pornography for the sake of protecting women, or was feminism about legalizing prostitution and unionizing the pornography industry so tllat women working in the sex industries could have access to healthcare or the justice system? Should there be HIV/AIDS education in public schools or should it remain a private enterprise? Along the same lines, shc,uJd there be sex education in public schools or should it be left up to the parents and somcrimes even the churches? \X!hose responsibility was it to talk about sex, sexuality, and safe sex practices? \V'here did sexual minorities fall within the feminist movement? \\?ere S&M practices radical, as Pat Califia and Gayle Rubin advocated, or was S&M another possibility of dominance over women? During these heated debates, feminist lesbians were increasingly marginalized. Within the larger feminist movement their voices and issues were ignored or lost among the other feminists. If lesbianism was discussed at all, it was as a theory and not as a practice. Feminists explored lesbian identity politic as an androgynous asexual environment of women caring for women: The woman-identified-woman commits herself to other women for political, emotional, physical, and economic support.... The lesbian, woman-identified- woman, commits herself to \vomen not only as an alternative to oppressive male/ female relationships but primarily because she !olJeJ women. (Bunch 162) In other words, lesbianism was seen as women supporting women (women as class) rather than women desiring other women (women as individuals). IvIainstream feminism ignored or judged the tangible realities of lesbian lifestyle and culture-sexual desire, butch-femme relationships, race and class differences-and the dirty secrets like rampant alcoholism, domestic violence, and hate crimes perpetuated within lesbian relationships. For many 9feminists, this theoretical lesbianism was a false utopia. The only problem was that it did not eXIst. The gay rights moyernent also placed lesbians in a difficult position. The 1980s brought the HIVIAIDS epidemic to the gay community; HIV/ AIDS was devastating, with daily death tolls in the thousands.s HIV/AIDS, in the early 1980s, mainly affected gay men and the vast numbers of men dying placed prevention and finding a cure (not to mention the simple acknowledgement that the epidemic existed) a top priority within the gay and lesbian movement. Once again, lesbians were forced to defer their politics. ]"csbians of color, facing multiple points of discrimination, were also feeling as though the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the gay movement did not include issues or address the tangible realities of their lives. Abortion rights were a priority for feminists but were not especially important to the lesbian community. HIVIAIDS, while affecting gay men and minorities, again had not directly influenced lesbians.6 Meanwhile immigration, public safety, workers' rights, and living wages took on new meanings when balancing identities of race, class, gender, and sexuality. And yet throughout the feminist sex wars, one could find small groups of lesbians across the United States exploring, and more inlportantly celebrating, lesbian culture and politics. The WO\V' Cafe was one of those places, and it did so through performance. Even while the feminist sex wars drained energy from the mO\'ement to the point where academics and the popular press alike \\'ere coining the phrase pOJ!~j;!!JJi!liJ!J!and/or touting S For statistical data please go to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's website Oast viewed on November 25, 2008): http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/ topics/ surveillance/resources/ slides/ trends/ slides/ trends.pdf 6 By this, I mean that woman-woman sexual practices were not directly impacted by the I-lTV/AIDS crisis. This is not to say that family and friends of lesbians were not affected. 10 the death of feminism, performers like Hughes, Tropicana, and Split Britches were lesbians engaging in feminist theory and practice. By setting lesbian camp within the context of the feminist sex wars, I want to explore both the critics and the performers from the perspective of the next generation in order to ret1cct on what has \vorked theoretically and practically, while exciting my generation as well as the next toward critical thought and practices that work in this postmodern, third wave feminist, queer (whatever this all means) world of terrorism, recession, and general fear felt culturally, economically, politically, and personally. Obviously, feminists did not resolve all of the conflicts from the feminist sex wars or the culture wars of the 1980s. This study, I hope, will alse> remind us to continue to seek out our desires and maintain our joy while creating our art and adnxating for our civil rights. 11 CHAPTER II CAMP? LESBIAN COMEDIC PERFORlvlANCE I lalfncIJed II~Y careers as a lesbian and as a lJiailn!ss SillJltllaneollsbl? For a IJJIJiJe Ih~y kind ~ffed ~ffeacb otber; tbere IVaJ a celta/II ~YllJbiosiJ. SOllJeone baJ JIIggeJted tbiJ bad JOllJetbing to do ll'itb ttle IVOI'leillg ill Jet!food reJtauralltJ, bllt ]01/ 'd III'l ' iT (ak/; IlII' Jt!yinp, sotlldbiJli', JO nplilJipe! ... ll1ealJlpbile, bm'k at Ibe Red LiJbster, I waJ llforking PO)! bard 10 preJell1 lJ!yse!/aJ a lob/1m JeparatiJI /vaitre,r,r, , .. THATJ SOT FU1\'N1'! Hughes Clil Note,r (197) This introductory excerpt from playwright/performance artist Holly Hughes reveals and makes strange two stereotypes within lesbian culture: the feminist lesbian lack of humor and the lesbian propensity (especially since the late 1970s and early 1980s) for political correctness. "\nthropologist Esther Newton speaks to the political correctness - to a feminist lesbian utopia, centering on egalitarian beliefs from the bedroom to the bar - within the lesbian feminist culture that Hughes confuses: "\X1ithin the women's movement, the 'politically correct' have led us to believe in and practice egalitarian sexuality, which we define as sexual partnering involving the functional (if not literal) interchangeability of partners and acts. Logically, there could be only one look and one role for all ... and why lesbian feminists tend to look alike" ("The Misunderstanding" 172). But Hughes, in a red strapless dress with a modish blonde haircut and luscious red lips, speaks of a different kind of lesbian feminism; she speaks of difference and resistance not only to heteronorrn.ativity but also to what it means to be lesbian and feminist. Hughes leaves no room for the sacred; 12 preferring the profane, she directlv relates to her audience while simultaneously challenging her audience's aSSUITlptions with bawdy fish jokes, feigned piousness, and reference to the lesbian/ ferninist light bulb joke-no spectator is left behind. The focus of this chapter is to define lesbian camp through the performances of Canrlelita Tropicana, Holly Hughes, and Split Britches. I begin by highlighting three fundarrlental elements of lesbian camp: lesbian camp leaves no spectator behind; lesbian camp is a visual culture built on incongruities and contingencies; and lesbian camp resides inside popular culture. Next, I explore the elements of camp accentuated by Tropicana's performance, Ail?/JJolies ~l(/ R(!lio!ttliol1 and Holly Hughes's elit A'otes. After Tropicana and Hughes, it becomes imperative to clarify the terms drag and butch-femme. By using feminist critics Kate Davy's and Sue Ellen Case's influential articles to aid in the definitions of butch? femme and drag, I illustrate the place of lesbian camp within lesbian comedic performance. Lastlv, ] explore Split Britches' Belle Ripricl'c and how it layers both drag and butch-femme into it perfonD.ances, disrupting identities and, once again, leaving no spectator behind. Bringing each spectator along for the performance is one element of lesbian camp. Feminist theorist Pamela Robertson disagrees, stating, "camp is a reading/viewing practice which, by definition, is not available to all readers; for there to be a genuinely camp spectator, there ITlUSt be another hypothetical spectator who views the object 'normally'" (l ""7) ..-\nd 'vvhile I wholeheartedly agree with Robertson on camp (including lesbian camp) as a reading and viewing practice, I believe that lesbian camp asks its spectators to leave their cultural and emotional baggage at the door of the performance venue without the possibility of retrieving the baggage after the performance ends because the performers have either stolen the baggage or shredded it to pieces. Leaving no spectator behind does not mean that 13 there is universality to lesbian camp or the readings/viewings of the performances; rather, as theorist Lynda Hart states, "the possibility is open for spectators to substitute their own identifications or to overlay them onto the performers, thus 'universalizing' the performance"C-1di'Zg 011/ 131). Chapter III will return to the spectator's relationship with the performances. Nevertheless, lesbian camp (not unlike other fOrIns of camp) layers its performances with iconic in'lages from all aspects of the performers' daily lives and experiences which in turn allows for multiple sites of identification. Another element in lesbian camp is its visual culture built on incongruity, where meanings are contingent on relationships between performer(s), spectators, text, history, politics, and necessity. The productions use our (spectators' and performers') knowledge and truths against ourselves. Lesbian camp unsettles our beliefs and normative conventions while at the same time celebrating our popular culture, our humanity, our differences, and our histories. An important principle to remember is that lesbian camp's play on popillar culture elements comes, at least partially, from within popular culture; it is not the outsider looking in, rather it is an exploration of heteronormatiYit:y, lesbian, and feminism from the inside out. Camp, whether it be lesbian or not, is not an art form that can completely reside outside of the mainstream of popular culture. Since camp is a disidentificatory strategy (meaning that it exposes the normative or popular cultures identity politic as a construct and then dismantles the identity, recycling it for the purposes of recreating possibilities), it engages popular culture from within. It is not a finger wagging "I know better than you" performance. Residing partially inside popillar culture by no means designates the producers of camp fully within the realm of normative culture. In fact, camp is used by those who, as 14 Teresa de Lauretis states, "lrefuseJ to accept and to live by the homophobic categories promoted by sexology: man and woman, with their respective deviant forms, the effeminate man and the mannish woman-a refusal that in the terms of my argument could be seen as a rejection of the hommo-sexua17 categories of gender, a refusal of sexual (in)difference" ("Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation" 160). The tangibility of living outside accepted norms of societ\' has the potential to create a critical standpoint disrupting the heteronormati,-e plot, which in turn has the potential to produce the performative strategies of camp. Performer Alina Troyano, aka Carmelita Tropicana, while trying to dismantle notorious images of Latina, Lesbian, and \\1oman, fIrst embraces the stereotypes before she starts to break them apart; hence, Tropicana's signature red seq1.:un strapless dress and fruit boa. \vhich is certainly a play on Carmen Miranda (Cbico Cbi((7 Boom Cbic) and Chiquita? banana's logo. Additionally, the name Tropicana inherits the historicity of Cuba's infamous Tropicana Club (known for its dancing, costumes, gangsters, and music), Desi Arnaz's Club Tropicana from I Lope LIf?Y, Tropicana orange juice, and even Wham!'s 1983 hit, Cllfb Tropicall(7, with lyrics including: "Let me take you to the place where membership's a smiling face-brush shoulders \\lith the stars-where strangers take you by the hand and welcome YOU to \vonderland-from beneath their panamas." Troyano/Tropicana is not attempting to assimilate through her use of stereotypical images; rather, she is creating an image of Latina that is simultaneously recognizable and impudent. Troyano/Tropicana's performance is a 7 Here de Lauretis is playing off of Luce Irigaray's pun on the French/Latin word of homme meaning man and the Greek homo for same. The word hommo or hom(m)os-sexual for de Lauretis and Irgaray comes to mean sexual indifference and becomes their symbol for heterosexuality as it is the normative practice that disallows alternative sexualities (de Lauretis, Teresa. "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation." Theater lolfl'lh//40.'2 (1988): 156). 15 grand gesture; a CeJtuJ (Brecht's social and historic gesture) meant to estrange the spectators' (un)conscious attitudes toward Latino/ a culture. Troyano/Tropicana's style of lesbian camp (as well as others) provokes the spectators but not always in a positive direction. Lesbian camp can be violent and aggressive and, while its multiple layers allow for moments of identification, it also unabashedly insults the viewer by exposing the spectators' and performers' assumptions and avoidances. In Troyano/Tropicana's 1986 production of MemoriaJ de la Relioillcidn/AiemorieJ q/tbe RetJollltion, the dichotomy between identification and contempt is manifested in the first two scenes. The prologue takes place in front of a projected image of an archetypal 1940s postcard of Hayana. The audience knows it is Hayana because "Havana" is inscribed along the top of the postcard. Tropicana enters, carrying a red rose and in drag (Tropicana's drag performances will be discussed later in this chapter). She is wearing her trademark dress and high heels. She speaks in a thick Cuban-American accent about memories, revolution, and her brother. At the conclusion of the scene, Tropicana flings her rose into the audience and the lights black out. l\s the lights fade up for the next scene, the backdrop has changed to a projection of Havana's capitol building. Two women are standing in front of the projection, wearing comparable polka-dotted dresses. As they wait for Tropicana's brother, one of the women begin: BRENDAA. Oh Brendah, I can't believe we are actually in Havana-love capital of the world. Everything is so romantic. (Looking in dictionary) Albondigas. BH.J-:'\;n\H. ""dbclndigas. (Looking in dictionary) Meatballs. BRENDA.\. I never knew] .atin men could be so? BRENDAH. Sexy, virile, gay caballeros .... 16 BRENDAH. What ti111.e is it? He should be here by now. BRENDAA. Brendah, in the tropics everything is slow. Maybe he overdid his siesta. (Troyano I, Carme!ita Trojiicana 2-3) Troyano/Tropicana, as with most of lesbian camp perforrners, uses visual imagery as well as innuendo and wit to accomplish her unapologetic effects-simultaneously pointed and excessive. Lesbian cmnp coerces its spectators to become self-reflexive, holding heteronormative culture in contempt, meaning that it compels us (the spectators) to revisit our dormant attitudes and assumptions toward particular stereotypes. In other words, lesbian camp activates its spectators in the revisiting of our (spectators') roles in the perpetuation of said stereotypes. Setting aside the prologue for the moment, Troyano/Tropicana's scene 1 (above) assault e'f! dc)minant heteronormati\-e reading and \-iewing practices begins with the two women standing in front of a projection of Havana's capital building. The irnage becomes a three-dimensional snapshot of the tourists' slide show-the criterion that the women were there in their matching dresses searching, waiting, hoping for a romantic experience in the "love capital of the world." The women's matching dresses and matching names return the proverbial stereotype of all brown people looking alike to all white people looking alike, while at the sa111.e ti111.e mocking North Americans for their lack of interest in learning a language other than English (the mispronunciationof "meatball"). Additionally, scene 1 exposes North American and European stereotypical attitudes toward Latino culture: everything in life happens more slowly, the laziness of siestas, and the obvious objectification toward (in this case) Latino men (sexy, virile, gay gentlemen). Lastly, this scene emphasizes the stereotypical tourists' mentality of the Kodak moment. With each click 17 of the camera, the tourist captures a representation, a simulacrum of the culture rather than actually immersing him/herself into the environment. Of course, the Brenda(a/h)s are willing to immerse themselves into Tropicana's brother I\1achito for their "tropical" experience, literally using I\Iachito as translator, guide, and companion. Yet the translucency of Troyano/Tropicana's stereotypes allows for easy access into her multilingual, multicultural, and clueer \vorld. She, like other lesbian camp performers, works the stereotypes both ways (pardon the pun) and the back-and-forth relationship is one of the ways in which lesbian camp makes spectator identitlcation possible. The stereotypes presented in scene 1 debunk cultural differences within and out of N onh American and Cuban cultures. In it, Troyano/Tropicana highlights moments of sinlliarity across cultures that in turn allow the spectators to identify with one or the other or both. Assumptions are dismissed as cultural differences and sinillarities collide. North American tourists do not understand Spanish, wIllie many immigrants come to the United States not knowing English. Tropical culture tends to be slO\v, wIllie North American culture tends to move too fast- mJssl11f( opportunities for relationships, elr seeing only the surface-looking only in terms of the generalities of race, gender, and sexuality. But there is also a desire to engage one another, if only for a moment, to embrace the mysteries and clifferences, in this case, in the "love capital of the world." Troyano/Tropicana also uses an element of lesbian camp that has been most thoroughly developed by feminist/ queer philosopher Judith Butler as genderpelformatiJJity. Butler defines gender performativity, with the help of Friedrich Nietzsche, as, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed. The 18 challenge for rethinking gender categories outside of the metaphysics of substance will have to consider the relevance of Nietzsche's claim in On tbe Genealogy ~l1l1orill.r that "there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction adding to the deed-the deed is everything." There is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is perfomatively constituted by the vcry 'cxprcssions' that are said to be its result. (Gender Trw/Me 33) Before going any further in developing the concept of gender performativity, it is important to state that gender performativity is not the same as getting up in the morning, going to the closet,8 and choosing a gender to wear for the day. Rather, gender performativity can incorporate acts, gestures, and desires produced on "tbe stltfm:e of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause" (Butler Gender Trrll/ble 136). For Butler (and myself), gender is a social construct informed by \X!estern culture's need to reify heterosexuality as the norm. Butler's theory of gender performativity entered the feminist discourse on nature VS. nurture (essentialism vs. social construction), building upon the work of Nietzsche and Riviere's masquerade (described later in this chapter), interpreting gender not as an essential attribute (If the corporeality, but as a power construct meant to reaffirm a heterosexual unity bet\veen gendct and sex. Gender performariYity is the act, gesture, and/or desire of an identity that is impossible to achieve; it is a constant failed repetition of the ideal \Xio/Man. 8 All facetiousness aside, gender performativity is not part of an individual's daily wardrobe-it is not so easily chosen. Judith Butler, in BodieJ Tbat Alatter (a partial response to Gender Itvllble) states, "this act is not primanly theatrical; indeed, its apparent theatricality is produced to the extent that its historicity remains dissll1mlatcd (and, conversely, its theatricality gains a certain inevitability given the impOSSIbility of a full disclosure of its historicity)." Judith Butler, BodieJ Tbat AlatM: 011 tbe Di,rcllrt,rll/; Li1lJitJ Of ':Sex'" (New York: Routledge, 1993) 12-13. 19 Lesbian camp uses and abuses gender performativity through layering the practices of drag, cross-dressing, and butch-femme against gender performativity, which in turn not onh' expc)ses gender's construction but also heteronormative culture's reliance on the unity between gender and anatomical sex for its reproductive survival Returning to Troyano/ Tropicana's prologue in kIellIories ~/tbe Ret'oilltioll, the performance can then be read and/or viewed as a quote of a quote. Troyano/Tropicana is impersonating Woman. \V'hat I mean is that Troyano/Tropicana is consciously attempting to perform the ideal \V'oman. Involved in her performance is the impersonation of not only WIoman but also, more specifically, a '"onh \mcrican cons truct of Latina \X!oman. Troyano /Tropicana's prologue performance is clearly excessive, which in turn exposes not only the construction of gender but of race and ethnicity as well. Every aspect of her performance is precise in its excessiveness: the painted beauty mark on left cheek, the sequined gown, her high-heeled sandals, her tango rose, and her thick accent expose that there is no authentic Carmelita Tropicana. There is a tangible woman present, but she is constantly shifting through multiple identities and recycling references in order to politicize and, as queer theorist Jose Esteban l\ilul10z says, "imagine new realities" (DiJidenti/icatioIlJ 133). Estller Newton has been a leader in tlle discourse on camp. Her book, lvlotber Camp: Female Impersonators in _America, based on her 1972 case study, is the cuhl-unation of two years of research on drag queens. The root of Newton's definition of camp is illcongrtloJIJ jnY/,JjJoJitioll. It places inconsistent or disagreeing positions side-by-side in purposeful tension of one another. Incongruous juxtaposition may be an effect read upon a situation or an intentional creation. Newton also believes that intentional camp must possess a transformation. This may include, but is not limited to, masculine/ feminine, high/low, 20 yomh/maturity, and the sacred/profane. For Newton, the impersonator portrays incongruous juxtapositions most succinctly \vith a "perSpeCllYe of moral deviance and, consequently of a 'spoiled identity'" (Newton "Role Models" 23). However, this spoiled identity is carried past the performance of the impersonator into the role-playing of homosexuals within daily life: the roles that happen at school, the gym, church, the office, parties, home, and with extended family. Therefore, she sees the impersonator's performance as the embodiment of camp: impersonators "are elevated positively by gay people to the extent that they have perfected a subcultural skill and to the extent that gay people are willing to oppose the heterosexual culture directly .... On the other hand, they are despised because they SY1Tlbolize and enlbody tl1e stigma" (Newton "Role Models" 22). Not all impersonation is camp. What makes impersonation camp is the incongruous juxtaposition. \X'hat makes Troyano/Tropicana's impersonation lesbian camp, as seen in the prologue and scene 1, is the incongruous juxtapositions between the different stereotypes / identifications of Woman and the tangible experiences of performers (and some spectators) as women. For Troyano, the role of Tropicana is that she plays with the stereotype of Latinas, for example, but she goes beyond it. She's the agent of her own story. Notice the women in the telenovelas, the Latino soap operas: the\ are always defined by the men in their lives. Latinas are stereotypically linked with heterosexual rc)mance. Carmelita has her romances but she's a lesbian. That in itself breaks the Latina stereotype. (Roman 87) Meanwhile, the Brenda(a/h)s are impersonating the North American \'V'oman. The actors layer a very precise form of femininity against their own, exposing the construction of their own genders as well as the ones created for l\1emories qftbe Rello!1ttioll. Female-to-female 21 impersonations are tricky. The main question that comes to mind is: Isn't it just called acting? I will certainly admit up front that I am not an actor nor do I teach acting, but I believe there is a difference between acting and female-to-female impersonation. Female-to? female impersonation concentrates on differences between the ideal \voman and women; impersonation plays to the stereotype. It also performs sinillarly to Bertolt Brecht's "not ... but" in that female-to-female impersonation is producing choices but always leaving the proverbial door open for additional readings and/or viewings. The Brenda(a/h)s disrupt Woman because their performances recreate Woman not only through their appearance (1950s high style and polka dots as well) but also through their actions. The Brenda(a/h)s produce \X'oman as (>ther to their Latino Man, NIachito (sexy, virile, gay, gentle, and sweet). Their (heterosexual) attraction to i'.lachito stems from mystery and "lack"-the lack of Man-and tl1erefore their performances become the representational Wioman. Of course, as the play progresses, the Brenda(a/h)s' performances of Woman fail, as Troyano/Tropicana uses cross-dressing and female-to-male in1personations to complicate notions of Man. (Machito is performed by a female-to-male impersonator and his friend, who falls in love 'with one of the Brenda(a/h)s [and the desire is returned], is a female cross dresser.) Troyano/Tropicana uses incongruous juxtapositions in alternative ways, producing a style of lesbian camp that highlights the constructedness of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Act 2, scene 1 in L~1.ettlorieJq/the RelJolNtioll provides distinct examples of incongruous juxtapositions as a way of corrupting the stereotypes of "lesbian" and "Latin? .\mcrican" as \\7e11 as cmbracing the cc>ntraclictions of all that it mcans to be a Latin? .\merican lesbian. The transparencies of Troyano/Tropicana's incongruities and her use of !I1.L'{ed media to layer the performance with explicit cultural references are almost "too 22 much," but the excess has the potential to surprise eyen the most decided spectators, disrupting our notions of the Cuban-;\nlerican lesbian. Act 2, scene 1, plies religion, language, culture, family, nationalism, literature, sexuality, and myth about one another in order to expose and denaturalize (while also celebrating) normative behavior. Camp uses and abuses normative culture. There is always a sense of celebration (why choose to dress up as the iconic, young, Marlon Brando if not to celebrate the film, masculinity, blatant sexuality), which is \'vhy camp is often read as apolitical and pointless. Camp is neither; instead, it seeks an understanding and a relationship with the norm in the same sense Others seek a relationship within the norm-through necessity. Camp as a strategy differs frolTl traditional radical politics in that it seeks to simultaneously annillilate and assimilate, while the radical politic looks only to the former. Celebration does not directly relate to assimilation. Female drag is a perfect example, as it ponra\s the superstar fcrnininity of ?\faril\'ll Monroe, Mae \X!est, Judy Garland, at the same time it disrupts popular notions of gender stability, normativity, and essentialism, especially when used in performance through the removal of the wig, bass or baritone voice singing, or the exposing of chest hair. Returning to i~1elJjorieJq/tbe Rtl'o!utioJl, every inuge has multiple meanings and multiple readings. l\ct Two begins with Tropicana escaping Cuba in a rowboat with two other companions. The year is 1955, it is night, and the boat has survived a storm at sea. Carmelita's comrades have fallen asleep and an apparition of the Virgin Mary appears. Beginning with the Virgin herself, we see Troyano/Tropicana debunking religion, colonialism, and the Jewish Mother, queering both the Cuban-American and non- Cuban- 23 American cultural connections and cultural memories, which include colonialism, slavery, revolution, war, exile, and sanctions. Cultural memory is defined as "an act in the present by which individuals and groups constitute their identities by recalling a shared past on the basis of common, and therefore often contesred, norms, conventions, and practices" (Hirsch 5) and it plays an important role in Troyano/Tropicana's work. The title, Me///oI7e.r o/a Rel!olil!iol/, is indicative of this. Troyano/Tropicana opens the piece, claiming, "Memories from the deep recess cavity of my mind, misty water.... i\'Iemorias-we all have them" (1, Gllym!ita Tropi(ana 2). This is a play about the memories, most of which have not been experienced by Troyano/Tropicana, of her family, her culture, and the history of exile as well as the influence, effort, and enterprise of the Cnited States. Troyano/Tropicana speaks between the two cultures, searching for representation, (re)creating the portraits of Cuban-Americans and the greater heteronormative convention in order to disrupt nostalgic memories and histories wIllie simultaneously embracing the cultures she navigates. One such portrait is this scene between Carmelita Tropicana and the \'irgin :\'IarY. The scene is in direct dialogue not only with the larger western themes but also with specific e\"cnr(s) in Cuban history. Tropicana and her two companions saved at sea by the Virgin Mary is a nvist on the legend ofJuan Morena and La Virgen de la Caridad from 1611. Morena, an African Slave, along with two indigenous brothers, Rodrigo and Juan Hoyos, were in the Bay of Nipe on their way to a salt mine when they floated past a figure of the Virgin Mary. When the three retrieved the icon, her white dress and veil were dry. A small wooden plaque found attached to the figure declared her La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity). Once taken ashore, the icon kept disappearing only to reappear with wet 24 clothing. This was seen as a sign, and a shrine was created near the copper mines in EI Cobre. \'';/hilc there are several versions of this legend from both the Roman Catholics and the Sanrerias, La Virgen de la Caridad came to represent and protect the slaves of Cuba. The nineteenth century brought renewed focus on Our Lady of Charity, as she protected the revolutionaries, and still in the twentieth century, with the rise of Castro, she protects all those in exile and/or who hold anti-Castro sentiments. An additional shrine to Our Lady of Charity was created in Miami in the 1970s to aid in the protection of all the boats coming from Cuba to the Cnited States.9 Our Lady of Charity has become a political as well as spiritual figure in Cuba and the Cuban-American communities. Troyano/Tropicana further politicizes the legend by inserting herself into the narrative. The insertion is not an incredibly radical position, as the tradition of Our Lady of Charity has always incorporated those typically silenced throughout history: slaves, revolutionaries (especially if they are not on the winning side), and the exiled. Howe\'Cr, lesbian and gay contributions to Cuban and United States culture have historically been invisible, downplayed, or forgotten; yet, in act 2, scene 1, Tropicana is asked to use her art as a weapon and "To give dignity to Latin and Third World women ..." (Troyano I, Carmelita Ttvpica17a 38). It is here that I find camp most interesting, because in almost all aspects of camp, especially in lesbian camp, the line between perforl1"ler/performance and individual/Jiving is blurred. The Virgin ;\lary has delivered a message that is taken up by l'ropicana not only \vithin the world of the play bur also 'vvithin the unique life of Troyano/Tropicana. Her successful reinterpretation of the story of Our JJady of Charity 9 For turther information 011 Our Lady of Charity, please see: Tweed, Thomas "~. 0111' Lady o{th(: E.'dle; DitlJpork Religiol1 at the Cuban Catholic Sbrill(! ill Miami. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. 25 works due to the be/wi.Y/ and be/ween of performance and life. The duplicity of performance/life and life/performance forces tensions between memories and histories, which in turn emphasize the constructiveness of culture, religion, sexuality, and gender. Troyano/Tropicana continues to camp the event by complicating the Virgin Mary. The \' irgin \Iary appears on the screen via 16mm and is played by l'zi Parnes. Parnes's drag performance is immediately recognizable as the Virgin Mary. The performance irresistibly conjures linages sitnultaneously holy, as in the meditative chapels of large churches (as well as shrines sinlllar to the ones built in Miami and Cuba) throughout the western Christian world, and kitsch, as in the backyard garden icons of Roman Catholic neighbors of my youth. Parnes's performance further demystifies the Virgin Mary using double entendres and a falsetto voice; yet, the Virgin Mary remains intangible and orphic due to the contrast between live performance and fum. The contrast bet-,veen the three-dimensionality of Tropicana, the rowboat, and her sleeping compatriots, with the two-dli11ensionality of a projection screen, creates an immediate distinction between the Virgin Mary and the others, not to mention the fact that the Virgin Mary is the only character played by a man. The Virgin Mary is held in high esteem within the Christian Church and, especially, the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity and, more specifically, Roman Catholicism are certainly part of Troyano/Tropicana's cultural traditions, whether or not she practices it herself. At the same time, the Virgin represents years of colonization; from Christopher Columbus's first visit until the Cuban Missile Crisis,1? Cuba has been maltreated by the ii' Fur ;1 murc "Fecit!c understanding ut' the ear]r relationshIp between Spain ilnd Cuba, read: Zinn, Howard. ,-1 ~,Hi/to!) 0(11)1' L'I/ited S'ii/it'.?: /9,C,PI1',1t'J1t. .\:ew York: Harper Collins, 1999. 26 superpowers of its day. And yet, there is certainly joy in the meeting between Carmelita and the Virgin, as the Virgin cahlls her fears and prepares her for the future: VIRGIN. Hold your oars. Fate "vill have you meet your nemesis, Maldito, and when you do, you'll know what to do. As for the geshtunke brother of yours, you too will be reunited. \Xlhere was I? Oh, the revolution. Let it be your art. Your art is your weapon. To give dignity to Latin and Third World women: this is your struggle. If you accept, you will be gifted with eternal youth. You will always be as you are today, twenty-one. C\R~'1ELITA. Nineteen, please. VIRGIN. Okay, but you will suffer much. Spend years penniless and unknown until 1967. CARMELITA. That is a lot of years, but for nineteen is okay, I accept. VIRGIN. But listen, Carmelita, there is more. You must never, ever, ever ... C\RMELITA. \I(;!hat? You are killing me. VIRGIN. Or all the years will return, like to that nasty Dorian Gray. CARl\1ELITA. Never do what? VIRGIN. Never let a man touch you. You must remain pure, like me. CARi\1ELITA. Never let a man touch me. Believe me, to Carmelita Tropicana (;uzman Jimenez Marquesa de Aguas Claras, that is never to be a problem. (she winks) Crroyano J, Car-me/ita 'TropiCtlntl 38). The deal made with the Virgin, similar to a deal made with the devil, reads contradictory to Christian beliefs, and the possibility that god is really a goddess plays to the notions of lesbian as women-identified and some pre-Judeo-Christian religions. ------------------ 27 Troyano/Tropicana also creates these incongruous juxtapositions through the Virgin's use of Yiddish. Troyano/Tropicana established multilingual conversations immediately in Spanish, then German, followed by Yiddish. The convention certainly reminds (and often frustrates) the spectator that English is not the universal language and, c\'cn within the L'nited States, foreigners struggle with language and culture. She is also establishing another layered visualization for the spectator through the reminder that the Virgin Mary, mother ofJesus, was a Jew. The stereotypical Jewish mother-a stock character in standup comedy and more traditional dramas, the overbearing, nosey, matchmaking, kibitzing, manipulative mother seen in routines from 5Clt!lrd~y lVigbt LilY?'s skits with Mike :\hers to}-~ddler011 tbe Roo/to S(:injdd--is now placed on i\Iary. Images of Mary verklempt over Jesus staying out too late, not interested in marrying a nice Jewish girl, certainly bring that relationship down to a tangible plane while also being a bit too ostentatious to be believed. Finally, Troyano/Tropicana challenges the stereotypes of feminism and lesbianism as well as toying with virginal purity through the deal be1:\veen the Virgin and Carmelita. She first plaYs to the heteronormative culture's hierarchy of sexuality, particularly the idea that President Clinton perfected: \XJhat, exactly, IJ scx? Mainstream feminism, at thc time of this performance, wanted lesbianism to be pure-to represent wOlnenloving women, women caring for women. This was not a sexual lesbianism, instead it was a utopia created by heterosexual feminists. Troyano/Tropicana plays to the feminist ideologies and then immediate disrupts them with the wink at the end of the scene. She spoils the popular \?irginhvhore dynamic from its root, thc Virgin Mary. This single gesture puts into question 28 the Virgin's sexualitv while expressing her own, unveiling wonun as sexLUll being regardless of cornn1itment, chelice, elf desire. Troyano/Tropicana's work is a clear example of the use of incongruous juxtapositions in lesbian camp. Her scenes are compact and dense, filled with visual and oral elements combining to simultaneously celebrate and den1ystify our notions of woman, lesbian, Latino/a, religion, and memory. Another slightly more complicated use of lesbian camp is displayed in Holly Hughes's 1993 production of Oil NolfJ. Hughes's use of lesbian camp in CII! j\.o!eJ is more complex because it is a solo performance piece that does not concentrate on impersonations, preferring instead to use incongruous juxtapositions of hetero/homosexual imagery and butch-femme gendet1t{cking. Genderfucking, as defined by theorist June L. Reich, "structures meaning in a symbol-performance matrix that crosses through sex and gender and destabilizes the boundaries of our recognition of sex, gender, and sexual practice" (255). Read with Butler, it is political because of its radical disruption of the anatomical sex, sexuality, and gender paradigm. Genderfucking exposes the social construction and lack of unity within said paradigm. Genderfucking is an important element of lesbian camp because it simultaneously celebrates and dismantles the roles of the butch-femme couple (although it should be noted that genderfucking can bappen outside tbe butch-femme coupling). In Clil ~\-1J!e.1, Hughes is working through her relationship with her father as well as her attraction to butch lovers (her femininity is made clear through her physical appearance on stage, as described earlier in this chapter, and self identification). While there is a physical absence of her butch partner, the lover is present through Hughes's expression of desire and specificity of language. Thus, even though it is a solo performance, Hughes establishes the 29 butch-femme coupling on stage. It is the desire for one another and her lover's masculine gender performativity that creates the genderfuck: "Putting on these men's clothes doesn't erase her woman's body. In fact, it almost makes it worse. And I'll tell you why. Her tits. They are just relflltleJJ. The way they just keep pushing through the white cotton like a pair of g;rclUndhc)gs drilling through thc Fcbruary snow to capturc their own shadows" (Clit j'\'otes 204). Her lover, with her men's jeans, men's underwear, and men's white cotton T-shirt is still very much a woman, and Hughes would not have it any other way. The genderfuck is not merely the butch-femme couple that Hughes portrays; rather it is the lover's w0tnanliness behind her masculine gender performativity. It is the gcnderfucking surrounding the butch-femme coupling that makes it camp and not the butch-femme couple itself. Hughes is disrupting not only the heteronormative unities of sex, sexuality, and gender, but also the unities of the butch-femme coupling through the tension between her lover's femininity and masculinity-her lover's breasts pushing through her white cotton shirt, the couple's lesbian desire, and their estranged contention between male/female and masculine/ feminine. C)nce Hughes establishes the genderfuck, she is able to explore the incongruous juxtaposition interpolated by heterononnative culture's reading and \?iewing of the butch? fel1U11e couple and tangible presence of the couple's needs and desires. \vith a performance somewhere between spectacle and certainty-amongst possibility and verity (in other words, what is truth within the biographical) Hughes then enters into the Polynesian world of the Hanalei: \X'e checked into the best motel, the Hanalei. Polynesian from the word go. Outside a pink neon sign announces: A Taste of Aloha. 30 You can taste it before vou even check in. J There's Styrofoam Easter Island heads everywhere. The bed's a volcano. Every night there's a luau. It's free, it's gratis. So of course we go. And I love the way they slip those pink plastic leis over your head. I just love that! I love the thought of those Day-Glo flowers blooming long after Jesse Hehns is gone. I hope. (Oit Notes 208). It is not only a holiday from verisimilitude but also an explicit escape from the dichotomous environrnents of normative culture's sex, gender, and sexuality systems (hetero/homo, n1.asculine/feminine, male/female). The campiness of the Hanalei, with its simulations of simulations including Astroturf, the Caribbean piiia coladas, plastic pineapples, Day-Glo flowers, and a Don Ho impersonator, allows Hughes to layer their bodies with incongruous meanings for the purpose of disrupting conventions in her own feminist and lesbian communities (as well as exposing the performativity within heteronormatiw culture). She exposes differences within the political and theoretical lives of the butch-femme couple with the tangible experiences of the couple; that is to say, the dynamics between politics/theoty and practice-the multiplicity of experiences, desires, and needs-cannot always be affL'{ed to the identity politic of feminists, lesbians, or heteronormativity. Camp then becomes an additional strategy for the butch-felmne couple, as it seduces the system of signs, manipulating images, and wreaking havoc on so-called authenticitv. Hughes also uses camp as a situational strategy born from the homosexual love/hate of oneself. Camp uses incongruity, theatricality, and humor to expose homosexual stigma and shame, while defiantly celebrating all those things that normative culture fl11ds 31 contemptible in the homosexual culture. In other words, Hughes uses lesbian camp, specifically the elements of genderfucking and hetero/homo juxtaposition, as a transitional language by which the lesbian community can entertain. To some extent, it is a coming-out party that concentrates on the bow instead of the }vbat. not what it is but how it looks, not what is done but how it is done. This should in no way be mistaken for simple distraction, nor should it be seen as the acceptance of western culture's label of moral deviant; instead, Hughes's lesbian camp should be seen as a product of the tension between the lesbian community and heterosexual normativity. elit l\[oteJ provides an excellent example of this style of lesbian camp: In front of the Ukrainian meat market she pulls me to her, wraps her arms around me, her hands on my ass like the lucky claw at Coney Island, clamping tight and lifting up, and then I'm a candy necklace, a ring flashing secret messages. She gin>s me a slow deliberate kiss, her body bending over mine like I am a knot she is carefully untying. With her tongue. Behind us, in the window of the market, a blue and gold sign announces "We're Free!" in two languages. We stay deep in the kiss, as though the sign applied to us as well. And for a moment I'm so happy, I could be Ukrainian. (Hughes Clit ;\'"oteJ 105) Here, Hughes first creates an image of desire, love, and sexuality using the quintessential boardwalk game, the lucky claw, embracing her queerness and literally letting it be exposed to the public. Hughes and her lover are wrapped in their desire for one another, feeling as free as a Ukrainian from the thumb of the USSR. This freedom comes with a sense of safety and security, and at the same time duels with the lesbian visibility/invisibility. As 32 with Hughes's earlier scene at the luau (Everybody's looking at us. But you can only see what you want to see. And what these folks want to see is not a couple of dykes making out at their luau. So that's not what they see. They start translating us into their reality .... They don't have any words for us, so they can't see us, so we're safe, right? [Cli/ ~\~OIeJ 208]), the butch-femme couple's ability to be read and/or viewed as lesbian/not-lesbian becomes simultaneously a tactic of necessity and a reification of cultural norm. Hughes is exposing these dichotomous and problematic tactics willie also celebrating them. She is the candy in her lover's mouth, while at the same time she is invisible and extra-legal-not a comfortable position to navigate. Yct the discomfort explored is also exciting and annihilating: publicly embracing one's lesbian desire through a kiss or (re)turning the disassociation of heteronormativity back on culture (What they think they're seeing is Matt Dillon making out with a young JulieAndrews. A young Julie Andrews. Before Vidor/ T7 idoria. [Oil NoteJ 208]) camps the moment by focusing on the queerness of the situation rather than assinlliating into a hicrarchical powcr dynamic. fhen, wlth one word, she brings us back to our Otherness: Then a man 'whips out of the store. In his arms he's cradling a newborn baby ham. But passing us he names us, he calls us: Shameless! Could be that this sort of man who thinks anyone, gay-straight, or ambidextrous-kissing in public is shameless ... meaning that hearts should stay tucked in the pants, hidden, not hung like fat sausages in the greasy public window. Or it could be that this is the sort of man who thinks that just the tJJOJ(gllt of me loving another woman, even if I never act on it, is a shameless act. I don't know what sort of man this is. But I wish what he said were true. 33 I wish I had no shame. Maybe there are shameless queers. But I know that I'm not one of them, and neither is my girlfriend. I know that buried deep in our bodies is the shrapnel of memory dripping a poison called shame. (Hughes Clit Notes 205) That one \vord-Jbi1JJJele.rs-possesses our (queers') deepest fears, places barriers on our actions, and defines us; it is the embodiment of our relationships in and out of the norm. For Hughes, the incongruities exposed are between the personal and the theatrical; they are woven into her solo performances as they are into our lives ...At times they are placed in direct tension with one another; at times they possess the power to control our actions, movements, thoughts-our lives-but at times they become points of celebration, both through annihilation and assululation. Hughes, choosing a meat market with its sausages hanging in the window, plays not only on prurient, phallic unagery hanging behind the lesbian kiss, but also the (dis)use of the phallus in her genderfucking. In other words, lesbian camp is political, as it stresses the two worlds of hetero and homo with all of their baggage open for exploration, criticism, contempt, humor, and celebration. She goes on to say, "But we're the lucky ones. There's not enough shame in us to kill us. Just enough to feel it when it rains" (Hughes ellt "",,'oteJ 2(5). The validity of camp in lesbian performance is not secure. In her article, "Fe/Male Impersonations," Kate Davy denies camp's legitilnacy in lesbian comedic practices. Davy uses Newton's defmition of camp (incongruous juxtaposition), relying heavily on the masculine-feminine juxtapositions which Newton states are "of course, the most 34 characteristic kind of camp"("Role Models" 24).11 Davy vigorously describes the subversive potential of drag in gay theater and its relationship to camp, while at the same time stating the problems such a discourse has 'vvithin lesbian theater. Dmy , while also speaking to the subversive potential of drag in gay theater, believes: Female impersonation, wIllie it certainly says something about women, is primarily about men, addressed to men, and for men. Nlale in1personation has no such familiar institutionalized history in which women impersonating men say something about \vomen. Both female and male impersonation foreground the male voice and, either way, women are erased. ("Fe/Male Impersonations" 133) There are t\vo parts to her problemitization of male and female impersonations: the history of male impersonation and female subjectivity in drag. In her footnote to the above quote, Davy states that there is indeed a history of male impersonation from Queen Elizabeth to Vaudeville, and she asks the reader to engage ] "aurcncc Scnclick's The' ClhllZgi17g Room: Se.:\?, Dr(~g (lnd the Tbeatel; a theoretical and historical study of drag. Yet, she does not accept a historical premise of women dragging for women.] C Davy's critique of drag has long been established within second-wave feminism, especially the feminist models of culture that recognize hierarchies of power, in which the white heterosexual male holds most of the power. In the confines of a hierarchical engagement it becomes easy to see how men dragging women can be read as condescending and sexist: II It should be noted that she continued, "but any very Il1congruous contact can be canl.py" Esther "ewton, "Role ~Iodcls:' Aiill~~aretAiead Aiade .He Gay: POJoilal ErJayJ, Public IdeaJ (Durham: Duke ep, 2000) 24. 12 /\nd to be fmr, Drag If Bt'r1/1ty ,md the Bemt, there are lines between "J eat them" and "So one might call you a consumer of happ11less," but 11l performance these Jines were said as J have written them in the script. For a hnk to the performance, pleast' see: http://hitkl.nyuedu/vldt,o!:''YCb13530486.html (accessed from December 2008-Jtme 2009). 72 as the ugliness encountered in fennle masculinity. Split Britches' abuse of the fairy tale complicates the Beast's desires as read and/or viewed within the audience, while at the same time establishing her/his desire as ugly. The desire, the ugliness, keeps the Beast lonely and unloved. His/her loneliness stings as it acknowledges the shame endure from her/his desires. The multiple layers of Shaw/ Gussie/Beast encourage an abundance of readings and identifications which in turn disrupts em.pathetic readings, although simultaneously holding a mirror up to the spectator-reframing the moment as a question rather than allowing the moment to arrest into apathetic acceptance of circutnstance. Shmv and Margolin are quickly able to disrupt the injurv/shame with (homo)scxual innuendo about eating and consu111.ing the Beast's visitors. The tension between the two-to expose our deepest shrapnel (to use Hughes's terminology) within our bodies and yet to express our SEXttality at the same time-disrupts the gaze. The intention is not to create change through shared identity; rather the intention is to establish a shared occasion. It is the shared occasion that will seduce an activated spectatorship. The moment actively engages the spectators as individuals and community members while also de\Teloping a lesbian discourse through joy. Joy is prevalent throughout lesbian camp. It establishes an approachable relationship between the performers and spectators. Joy works from the inside out. \V'hat I mean by this is that joy abounds in environments without hierarchical convictions. This is not to say that joyful occasions lack definition or cOlwiction; rather, joy allows for recepti\~ity. Recepti\~ity in turn allows for the establishment of a community of viewers and/or readers eager to experience and participate in the occasion. Split Britches continues to place into tension shame and pride once the Father allows Beauty to take his place as the Beast's captive. Beast, over dinner, asks Beauty if she finds the 73 Beast ugly. Beauty adm.its that she does. This does not deter the Beast, as s/he asks Beauty to marry multiple times, each time eliciting the answer no. The Beast continues day after day finally pleading. 32 BEAST. I'll be Gertrude Stein to your Alice B. Toklas. I'll be Spencer Tracy to your Katharine Hepburn. I'll be James Dean to your. .. Montgomery Clift. BEAl'T':r7 ? Well, I always wanted to be Katharine Hepburn BE/\ST. I always wanted to be James Dean. BEAUIY. I IVaJ Katharine Hepburn BEAST. I was James Dean (Case Split Bltiches 82). Just as in Shaw's and Bette Bourne's scene from Belle RepI7??lJe in Chapter II, \X!eaver and Sl1:1w's butch-femme gender perfor111<1tivities betray their desires, leaving them exposed to the recuperative powers of heteronormative culture: shame or mimetic gender roles. And yet, in their gender performativities, they find pleasure and pride through identifications lJ!itlJ Stein, Toklas, Tracy, Dean, Clift, and Hepburn. Beauty and the Beast begin to weave two coming-out stories, painful and confusing yet hungry and joyful. Jill Dolan, in The FemilliJ! Spettator tlJ Critil~ writes: ,\Iost coming-out stories continue to refer to the heterosexual paradigm the "new" lesbian is leaving. The focus is on her decision, on revealing her sexuality to her family, and on her hesitant entry into her new community, rather than on a full consideration of the lifestyle she intends to assume. This locks the coming-out play --'gil1n, one of (hc dlffercnce, between thc performance and the script is that 111 performance, after every proposal, the Beast state, that s/he will renJrn tOITlorrow. The passage of tlrne was not initially wntten Into the scnpr. 74 in an oppositional stance that is defined by the heterosexual worlds the lesbian wants to leave. (109-10) L)td/lly dlle! !I'I' Bed"l is not a traditional coming-out narrative; rather, it is as play about lesbian desire and the many forms it takes, along with the hurdles often associated with acting upon such desires. The transformation of the more traditional coming-olit plays, that is to say the movement from a closet lesbian to a lesbian operating within heteronormative culture (jobs, education, social, and political occasions), is intertwined with the tangible corporality of pride and shame; it is intertwined in the choices we make: to be (in)visible, to be (a) political, to live in/outside the ghetto. Instead of engaging a particular coming-out narrative, \veaver and Shaw saturate their desires with the pain of intolerance and misunderstanding, exposing their desires as constructs. Beall~Y and tlJe Beast places into tension identities and desires through its layering ()f character/actor, pride/shame, butch-femme/bcauty-beast, and fairytale/film iconograplw / tangible realities. The audience is forced to (re)interpret the incongruous juxtaposition of Shaw playing Gussie playing the Beast wanting to be James Dean, becoming James Dean. No single identity endures; no single identity can be assumed to be organic or automatic. Once again, the disruption of identity forces new meaning upon the scene. The audience becomes the primary meaning maker, culling identificatory moments piecemeal from the scene as each individual acknmvledges his/her pride/shame threshold; each individual is coerced into (re)examining his/her desires, priorities, choices, fears, politics. Moreover, while rhythmically and poetically explosive, the Beauty and Beast's transformation from "I always wanted" to "I Illas' simulates the ease by which constructed desires have the potential to become essentiaL And while the essentialist debate among the 75 gay and lesbian populations is one for a later date, the transformation ti'om "wanted" to "was" is a powerful moment in production, as it also represents the moment when the t\\!0, for the first time, see each other differently. Of course, Shaw and \Xleaver are not becoming J ames Dean and Katharine Hepburn, but instead are extending their desires into iconic film or fantasy identifications. Hart explains the importance of such fantasy identitication: Fantasy identitications that refuse modern constructs of same sex or opposite sex desire-that is, gendered object choices-((jIJJ!Jjlfle that desire. Consequently, the possibility is open for spectators to substitute their own identifications or to overlay tllem onto tlle performers, thus "universalizing" the performance. G/'ldillg ONI 131) Split Britches' "universalizing" inverts traditional gaze theory and theories of representation as there is no tangible male desire. Even as Shaw/Gussie/Beast becomes .J ames Dean, "I )]l(U James Dean," man is only represented as a fantasy archetype. This is not to say that men will not have moments of identification with the piece; instead, the inversion works not only to expose the constructedness of gender, sexuality, and sex but also to expose the hierarchy of representation as a social construct. The audience is placed in an lUleasy geography of simultaneously interpreting as individual and group. The individual may or l1UY not be in tension with the group, as identHications are constructed through an inverted representation. For, as there is not one identity "lesbian," neither is there a single identity "heterosexual." As Weaver, Shaw, and Margollillayer their individual identities and thereby complicated butch-femme, heterosexual, homosexual, Jew, Christian, lesbian, mother, African American, Latino, Asian, wealthy, poor identitities, they are at the same time revealing opportunities for the spectators to relate to-not as hetero, homo, queer, lesbian, 76 gay, straight, woman, man, or other, but as present within the experience. And it is this presence that captivates the audience. Resisting the binaries of identificatory practices while trying to enable an acti'Tated spectatorship is not easy, but as Biddy Martin-while discussing feminism and Foucault ? reminds us, "Foucault insists that our subjectivity, our identity, and our sexuality are intimately linked; they do not exist outside of or prior to language and representation but are actually brought into play by discursive strategies and representational practices. The relationship between the body and discourse or power is not a negative one; power renders the body active and productive" ("Feminism, Criticism, and Foucault" 9). Strategies within lesbian camp work to interrupt the link between identity, subjectivity, and sexuality that in turn exposes dynamics of power and representation. Most often, as is the case with the work of Holly Hughes, the disturbance takes place in the joyful moments of chaos. In Hughes's W'Torld U~Tlthollt End, we (the spectators) see her struggling with power, language, subjecti,?ity, and the (in)visibility of \\lomen's sexuality..And, on some level, it also becomes about lesbian subjectivity and identity. But rather than exploring the tensions between language, power, and subjectivity in terms of hierarchical oppression, Hughes embraces lesbian camp strategies that focus on destabilizing subjectivity, identity, and sexuality. In other words, where institutionalized power meets female sexuality, subjectivity is examined and exposed at the very moment where woman meets mother and crazy meets bitch. H ught',; refuses the "either/or" dichotomies; regardless of the outcome her strategies may accommodate resistance, but always render the body active: 77 I'm in school, and I discover Big Problem Number Two. You see, the French I got from my mother, and the French they're trying to teach me in school-th~)I don't match. They're trying to tell me that my mother didn't know French. They're trying to tell me her way of talking, \vith her tears and her pussy and with her sentences which could say "death" but mean "pleasure" in the same breath, and her words-her words which were like fifteen gold bracelets sliding down the arm of a woman dancing in a French nightclub-they're saying: "That's not French. That's not the real French." In fact, they're saying that none of what was said between us was real at all. Do vou know what I learned in school? I learned in school that there's no word, in French or in any other language that I know, for the kind of woman my mother was. There's no word, in French or any other language that I know, for a woman who is a mother and a woman at the same time. (Clit Note.r 169) Her mother's French is a culture of women's sexuality that is sin1ultaneously defiant and cClIlsumed by western culture. This French is sensual, sexy, voyeuristic, and female. It is an almost untouchable French, impossible to imagine in our dualistic economy ofhetera/ homo, good girl/bad girl, and virgin/whore. When I performed my Acting II fmal monologue from 1l7or/d Witholft End, I misread the occasion. It was easy to do. I misread Hughes. I brought my identity politics to the performance; I did not leave my assumptions at the door. I was not open to the occasion-I did not understand how a comedy could be simultaneously inclusive and disruptive. My 78 misreading failed the performance; my misreading failed to provide accessibility so necessary to lesbian camp performances. I was angry and so was my monologue. The monologue did not work in class or in final performance. There was no joy nor was there the possibility for :1 useable reception. This portion of the monologue relies heavily on reception and the audience's ability to imagine desire in a breath-to expose our (the spectator's) desires in our tears-to confront our identities and our identifications with Otherness. \y'ithout the joy found in the "fifteen gold bracelets sliding down the arm of a woman," there can be no idellt!fZ(iltioll ~vith; there can be no desire and no resistance. Hughes next wonders if it was all a lie. rhis language of her mother's. She, too, struggles with boundaries of heteronormative culture's vision of women's sexuality, but ultimately is able to assess that her mother \\"as neither and yet both what she grew up believing and what others saw: "Do you know what they said about my mother? They said: 'Holly, your mother is crazy. Nobody did anything to her. She's just crazy.' And I started to agree. A little while later, we were both right. My mother was one crazy bitch" (Hughes Oit NoteJ 170). As much as this chapter's exploration engages spectatorship generally and introduces the artists' interests in performing in diverse venues, it is important to note that the artists producing lesbian cam.p had a single spectator in mind. The artists in lesbian camp had the lesbian spectator in mind when developing, producing, and performing their work. The single spectator should not disrupt the discourse on reception and lesbian camp's ability to lea\'e no spectator behind; rather, as director Anne Bogan writes, "one of the most accessible works of theater I have ever directed ... spoke to many people because I chose one person to speak to" (111). Hughes's The Tf7e1! q/Horflinw exemplifies Bogart's point. The lFeI! q(Hol'lzineJJ, as stated earlier was written on a dare for Hughes's friends at the WOW! 79 Cafe. Thc IF 'ell o/11orl1ll1['JJ has becomc onc of Hughes's more successful plays. Hughes and her friends were never able to perform the piece the in the same venue twice, but it has had extended runs in New York and Los Angeles, and was most recently performed at the College of Staten Island in April 2009. The Tr'dl qlHornineJJ is excessively sexual, focusing on campy double entendres and cli"ing into a ycrnacular that is stolen, slippery, and queer. For, as lesbian and feminist theorist Lynda Hart states, These lesbians do not seek visibility among the negative semantic spaces and cognitive gaps of thc patriarchal unconscious; rather, they seize the apparatus, distort its mirrors, and lead the audience into the interstitial dance space, where lesbian subjecti"ity refuses the dichotomy of the revealed and concealed (-,,4ctitlg Ollt 133) . .-\ ct III, scene i, the previously invisible becoming visible: NARRATOR. The setting, a peaceful New England town, just a town like many others, where the men are ll1en- OFFSTAGE VOICE. And so are the women! NARRATOR. The play that puts lesbians on the map ... and possibly the menu! i\BRGARET Dl'MONT. Do tell, how are the lesbians today? BABS. Hot! Mmmmmmmmm ... GARNET. Steaming ... (Sfllpillg .rOlli/dr.) GEORGETTE. Served in their own juices! (Lip Sl7!ackilzg.) (Hughes eM NoteJ 56) 80 The Lebanese and Tridelta Tribads have been named, but there is a cost. Judith Butler speaks to the cost of naming, as she warns, identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing categories of oppressive structures or as the rallying points for liberatory contestations of that very oppression. This is not to say that I will not appear at political occasions under the sign of lesbian, but that I would like to have it permanently unclear what precisely that sign signifies. ("Imitation and Gender Insubordination" 13-14). Producers of lesbian camp certainly share Butler's concern regarding identity and identification. Hart acknowledges this, stating that camp "affIrms what it denies. It is aggressive but not indifferent" (Ading Ottt 134). Therefore, while lesbian is revealed, the game is still on. Now leJbian connotes all that has come before as well as everything left out and anything yet to be named. It remains a destabilizing identity upon which all spectators can create idel7tijimtiol7J lJJith but have difficulty identifying tH. Han's aggressive attribute is seen immediately after the opening dyke humor of Act III, where Hughes denudes lesbian identity as seen in heteronormative culture as well as lesbian culture. NARRATOR. This is the play women who love women have been waiting to see! BABS. Can that chowder! Who wants to see an uptight WASP from the Midwest stumble around in a polyester dress? I'm the one they come to see. C,\llMELIT\. Who's gonna see you on the radio? NARRATOR. A collaborative effort- BABS. This is my big moment! I got my teeth capped for this part! ._--_._--- 81 NARRATOR. Cnlike traditional theater ... ROD. Hey, hey, girls con1.e on-remember there are no small parts. GARNET. There are only small minds, Rod. BABS. You should know, you've got one of the smallest! NARRATOR. A proverbial filling up and spilling over of Sapphic sentiment! \'lCKl. Good things come in small actresses! B.-\BS. Tell me about it, I came in sen'ral small actresses. N.ARRA.TOR. Yes, ladies and genders, our show is another fine example of women working together. CARt\iIELITA. Where's my lipstick! Which one of you took my lipstick! NARRATOR. A testimonial to women's love for one another! 15:'\15S. I \vouldn't touch anything of yours! NARRATOR. Of their ability to surmount the limitations of their own egos, to work collectively! BABS. I'm the star! I'm the star! I'm the star! (Clit NoteJ 57-58) Hughes is purposely excessive, debunking the idealized lesbian utopian myth with highly sexual, highly gcncleri7ed, and self-aggrandizing women. The fierceness of Hughes's lesbians in JE.YllaiitJ! is also seen in the characters' interactions with one another. The sexually charged language of this production is not only fun for the participants, but also a conscious abandonment of lesbians' invisibility through friendship, "Sapphic sentiment," and "women who love women." Hughes ambushes the lesbian community with the same gusto she does the heteronormative community, forcing the spectator to relinquish lesbian 82 identity as being "more about sitting in circles than sitting on each other's faces" (Love "A Gentle Angry People" 98). Lesbian camp resonates not only with lesbians but also with feminists, heterosexuals, and queers. It uses its strategies of disrupting the heteronormative reading and vie"\ving practices, exposing the social construction of gender, sexuality, and sex, and disturbing identity and identity politics in order to create an activate spectatorship. Chapter IV builds on lesbian camp's relationship with its spectators, exploring the ways in which lesbian camp performers and performance affected the feminist movement as well as popular culture. In ()thcr words, \\7ho among us will cycr think of the Lcbanese in the same way? 83 CI-L,\PTER IV CITIZENSHIP, OR, WHERE THEORY AND PRACTICE MEET Blft Jve ,,'1111 110t IIJ01'e tbeo~y if/to adion 11171e.r.r lye clllI/lmi it in tbe e(centri( (/nd JJlimdering IP(!YJ q/olfr dOlly 1~/t;. I bm'c lJ'riltell tbe JtorleJ tbatjo//oJl) to gilY' tbeo~}'j7e.rb and breatb. Pratt (22) Lesbian camp has always been political. Peggy Shaw during an interview with Kate Davy states, "As lesbians you have no choice but to be political ... the very nature of being a lesbian is political because it always causes a political discussion or a sexual discussion" ("Shaw and \X'ea,-er Intelyiews" 10(4). Lesbian camp's politics stems from its engagement with the debates within feminism, lesbian feminism, and the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. Lesbian camp, coming into its own in the early 1980s, found itself in the midst of divisive criticisms within feminism and heteronormative culture. Lesbian camp performers used lesbian camp strategies and an activated spectatorship to transform the either/or politics of 1980s feminism, lesbian feminism, and heteronormative culture into complex, situational, and contradictory discourses revolving around gender, sexuality, multiculturalism, and art. I begin this chapter exploring the ways in which lesbian camp performers Holly Hughes, Split Britches, and Carn"lelita Tropicana disrupt the popular theories and methodologies and/or practices \vithin feminism and the larger heteronormative culture. In some cases, specifically with that of Holly Hughes, I discover a direct dialogue between 84 performer and politician-between theory and practice. In other cases, I detect a more enigmatic (re)consideration of theory and practice. I further develop the relationship between feminist lesbian identity politics and lesbian camp, specifically regarding sexuality, butch-femme, and drag, with the intention of answering the following questions: How did lesbian performance practices differ from popular theories and (political) methods of feminists during the culture wars and the feminist sex wars? and How did these performance practices provoke feminist theory and practice since the sex wars? The feminist sex wars playa crucial role in the development of lesbian camp. Lesbian camp was a tactic used by the performers at the \X!O\'x/ Cafe to engage the debates, provoking dialogue, and disrupting the austerity of sex wars feminism. The originator of the phrase sex wars remains unknown but it is said to have been developed during the 1982 Feminist IX Conference, TOJJJtlrds tl Po!iti(~f q/Se:x:tta!i~y, at Barnard College.33 There, Gayle Rubin spoke of a "sex panic" that was transforming mainstream feminism into a weapon used by the neoconservatives for the purposes of tightening legislation against pornography, obscenitv. and alternative sexualities. The sex wars were predominantly placed in the realm of white middle class heterosexual feminists with the exception of the pornography/ obscenity debate, which immediately revolved around homosexuality and the arts. Both sides of the feminist sex wars were absurdly rigid. Both sides of the feminist sex wars fought vigorously for the moral high ground and used identity politics to position .\3 ror a more 111 depth study of the Barnard Conference and the feminist sex wars, please read the following: Duggan, Lisa, and Nan D. Hunter. Sex' rY'Ol:r: Sexual DiJ"J"eJlt (lIId Politiail Cultmr. ~ew York: Routledge, 1995. \'ance, Carole S. Conf Author Scholar, and Conference the Feminist. PkaJ"Nre iIIId Dlwgl'l:' Explolillg Femak Se:>olcility. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1984. Gerhard, Jane F. De.ritillg ReMllItion: Serolld-IFm!e F(!JJ7illi.r1l7 and the RelNitilig ~rA!77eli(Clll Se:x'Icol Thollght, 1920 to 1982. New York: Columbia UP, 2001. 85 thcmsc\vcs for or against issucs. This simultancously created a sense of pluralism within idcntity politic (particularly lesbian and feminist) while also forcing individuals to side within the debate or risk one's identity being dismissed. Feminist journalist Ellen \\Iillis states, "Since the mid-80s, the intensity of the sex debates has waned, not because the issues are any closer to being resolved, but because the two sides are so far apart they have nothing more to say to each other"(No M.ore 1\Tia Gids 20). Additionally, the majority of women, feminists, and lesbians "vere caught between sanitized identities.34 It is here where venues like the \\/0\\1 Cafe and lesbian camp did their best work; where they fumbled, failed, and nourished in their attempts to disrupt the ferocity of the feminist sex wars and the sanctity of the identity politic. Many of the \\10\\1 performances were explicitly sexual, especially from artists like Holl" Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Split Britches. Their sexual explicitness is a ycrbalization of thcir desircs and their idcntities. Their sexual explicitness also begins to return lesbian back to the reahn of sexuality with all of its sweat, desire, and messiness. Each perfon-ner explores her own sexual historicity, exposing the complexities and contradictions within their own constructions of lesbian. In her 1989 solo performance piece World n;ztbotft End, Hughes not only comes to terms with her mother's death and her mother's story, but also hcr o\vn: .'\fter my mother died, I probably don't need to tell you this, but all of my sentences started with "after my mother died...." 34 By sanitized identities, I mean theoretical identities that cannot and do not incorporate or embrace the complexities and contradictions involved in an individual's whole life. 86 And then, a little while after my mother died, the only thing I really wanted to do was tuck. Sc> there's this guy at work, right? Always hovering over mv Pc. .c-\sking me if I wanted to go to the Blarney Stone. So finally I got to say to him: "Look, buddy, I bate,yoll. You're an idiot, and I'm a lesbian, and you touch, you're a dead man, okay?" And he's laughing. I've never been so funny in my life. After my mother died, I told him that she had died, and IJe Jtmted to try. I couldn't believe it. This guy I thought was an idiot was crying, all over the copier about my mClther.,\nd I thought: "Okay maybe you're going to get lucky after all." All of a sudden, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be nasty.... I said: "Okay, cowboy. Here's the program. You're on the menu. We're gonna take the plunge. We're gonna go for broke. (Oit NoteJ 177) The death of her mother leaves a space that Hughes wants to fIll with sex. And so she does, with her "idiot" coworker. As the above scene indicates, Hughes's sexual t1ing with her coworker is easy because she knows how to speak the language-it is her mother's language. But it is also a moment it time. The complexities of her relationship with her co-worker become a metaphor for her relationship with feminism and lesbianism: aggressive and contingent while also passionate and joyful. In an interview with Rebecca Schneider, Hughes admits, "1 have a piece that I didn't include where I said that I ha\'e a lot of rules in my life and having a lot of rules convinces me that I'm still a lesbian even though I might fuck a guy" (181). Hughes's lesbianism is not tlle desexualized lesbianism associated with one side of the feminist sex wars; rather it is 87 complicated and contradictory sexuality. At the same time Hughes refuses to deny herself a community and identifications with her desires. Hughes's refusal to deny herself and her spectators' complex identifications with lesbianism and feminism becomes a part of the feminist sex wars discourse. r.World n~Titboltt End attacks the divisiveness of the "sex war" identity politics through the imperfection and nusperceptions of relationships as seen by a daughter intrigued and yet suspicious of her mother. Through lJ70rid rrTitboltt End, Hughes denie~ a constant identity, instead embracing sex from multiple positions. Carmelita Tropicana enters the discourse as she also oozes sexuality in her performances, but more importantly she confronts fenunist discourse through drag as she disrupts fixed notions of Latina Lesbianism. Many fenunists find drag problernatic, especially as a feminist strategy. Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye explains, "This femininity is affected and characterized by theatrical exaggeration. It is a casual and cynical mockery of women, for whom fenuninity is the trappings of oppression, but it is also a kind of play, a toying with that which is taboo" (137). Even feminist performance theorist Kate Davy agrees. Returning to the discussion in Chapter II, Davy is reticent to inscribe camp onto the humor of Shaw, Weaver, Hughes, and Carmelita Tropicana because she believes that camp, and more specifically drag, "while it certainly says something about women, is priiTlarily about men, addressed tel men, and for men" ("Fe/Male Impersonation" 133). Drc{f', queening, then, is seen as yet another way ,vomen are objectified and discriminated against. The anti? drag feminist point of view uses a strict hierarchical power structure where white men are at tlle top and women of color are at tlle bottom. Drag queening is therefore seen as an option only for the privileged few who can take on and off costumes at will, depending upon their social, political, and economic circumstances. Women once again are thought to be 88 objectified because the drag performances create the spectacle of\X!oman, an unachievable identity for most women. DraJ', kinging, on the other hand is seen as women wanting to feel the power of the Man, even if temporarily. Even drag kinging is seen as problematic in this feminist model because while seemingly wishing to engage heteronormative culture as Man, the drag king is also read as re-inscribing the invisibility of Woman. However, the work of Cannelita Tropicana disrupts notions of Man and \X!oman in exciting ways. First, Carmelita Tropicana is herself a character created by Alina Troyano. Tropicana, as described in Chapter II, is a flourish of a grossly stereotypical Latina lesbian. \,'ith her [hick Cuban accent, high heels, fruit boa, and slinky yet sparkly red dress, Troyano fondles the hcreronormative white stereotype of Latina women. It is an excessive performance meant to expose cultural, gender, and sexual bias. Troyano, in an interview \-vith David Roman, admits, "some white feminists were offended by my performance; they thought it was too nmch of a stereotype" (91). Such a reaction by son'le white fenunists only emphasizes the bias Troyano is trying to disrupt. Tropicana is a drag performance; Tropicana is :1 cultural formation by which Troyano recycles images of pre-revolutionary Cuba as well as heteronormative white culture's fantasies of Cuba.3" 2\1em017eJ ~la RelJoitttiol1 (1987) opens with Tropicana walking out onto stage in front of a projected image of a postcard-a tourist-type postcard of Havana. \X7hile holding a rose, she begins: Memories from the deep recess cavity of my mind, nusty water color ... \lcmorias-we all have them. (to audience) You do. And I, Carmelita Tropicana, 35 Carmelita Tropicana is a cultural formation bccausc Troyano abuscs stereotypes trom Cuban and Arnerican culture to create Tropicana. Troprcana, while possessing depth in character is a mirror between the two cultures, offering onc stereotype for another, forcing disruptions of believes through our own reflections. 89 have them of my beloved country Cuba. (looking back at the slide projection) Who knew in 1955 what was to happen to us? \'Vho knew then what destiny was to be? If maybe my baby brother "t\1achito had his mind more on the revolution and his date with destiny than on his date with the two Americanas, who knQ\,vs? Who knows? She flings the rose at the audience and exits. Blackout (I, (clImelita Tropicana 2) Tropicana's performance is a drag performance and, as discussed in Chapter II, it incongruously juxtaposes Woman, Latina, and Lesbian. The excessiveness of the opening performance expcJses to the audience the tensions between the real and the unreal, Troyano and Tropicana, memories and histories. Troyano/Tropicana blurs the borders, creating her own history from a mixture of her own personal memories, Cuban cultural memories, and US cultural memories. She then manipulates the tensions as she woos her audience with thick accent and Latina sensuality, allowing us (her audience) to go back in time with her, to let her tell us a story. She, like the rose she throws into the audience, is simultaneously beautiful and formidable. Troyano/Tropicana first seduces the spectators through her language of the body and with her words, establishing a common ground through our memories/histories. Only then (as discussed in detail in Chapter II) to expose us to our own cultural biases as the lights restore into scene 1, where two American women in matching polka-dot dresses wait for Tropicana's brother Machito. Troyano/Tropicana's playground is the borderland between Cuba and the United States, Latina and lesbian, \'Voman and ,vomen, butch-femme and feminist. Tropicana is Huent in the language of cultural tourism; she creates a Cuban authenticity just right for soliciting. Continuing with Troyano/Tropicana's memories/stories, scene 6 moves the performance into high camp, with Rosita Charo and the Tropicanettes performing "Yes, We 90 l-Ln-c ~o Bananas" in front of a backdrop of palm trees and t1owers, multi-colored lame curtains and dresses, and, of course, fruit-lots and lots of fruit, especially on the posteriors of the women. The Tropicanettes dance and sing, spreading out from the stage to envelop the audience. The Tropicanettes transform the relationship between performer/spectator into a party for all to participate in and enjoy. Aside from the all-out excessiveness of costumes, scenery, and choreography, the scene's drag performances by Rosita and the Tropicanettes simultaneously debunk and celebrate drag (as well as Latino cabaret and es industrialization of Central and South America, and the Caribbean). The performers deliberately layer a hyper-gendered performance on top of their own characters as well as their own gendered bodies. The tensions between the actor Kate Stanford and her character, Captain Maldito (corrupt Cuban police), and the character Tropicanette, deconstruct the possibilities of drag to be read hierarchically. There is no verisimilitude between either Capitan Maldito or the Tropicanette; therefore, Standford's drag performance of both, placed in tension with one another, exposes not only the construction of sex and gender but of drag as well. The oversized fruit attached to the performers' rear ends and the exaggerated lame gowns expose drag as the stereotype it could potentially become. The Tropicanettes' performance does not allow for the drag performance to maintain the status quo for mascu1ll1ity or femininity; the performance disrupts \Xioman and lv1an as well as masculine and feminine. And this is the key to Troyano/Tropicana's drag performances, whether she performs Pingalito Betancourt (his first name means little penis) or as Tropicana, she continually disrupts drag, which in turn destabilizes the performance itself: in scene 6 it is the turbulence of the Tropicanettes; in the prologue it is Tropicana herself-the drag performance itself is placed into question as Troyano/Tropicana admits, "Identity really 91 depends on where you are at, it's so much about geography.... All of these shifts in identity depend upon \>,;]10 is doing the seeing" (Roman 90). - - In her editor's introduction to 1, Cl17nelita Tropical/a, Chon A. Noriega states Troyano/Tropicana "produces a performance that interrelates nationality, gender, and sexuality without reducing them to a single point of identification: 'Cuban lesbian artist.' Instead, Troyano stresses the 'multi, multi, multi'" (1, Carmetita Tropical/a xi). Troyano/ Tropicana's "multi, multi, multi" becomes the foundation upon which she creates a hybrid performances. By hybrid, I mean that Troyano/Tropicana attacks and dismantles the universal feminisnL, lesbianism, and Latina stereotypes from multiple perspectives- (re)memory, (re)historicizing the Cuban-American lesbian. Other feminists of color engaged in similar practices, but Troyano/Tropicana's lesbian camp strategies not only disrupted feminist and heteronormative practices, but also disrupted lesbian and camp strategies as well. Troyano/Tropicana turns drag upside down in the same way that drag turns gender upside down. Troyano/Tropciana leaves no room for hierarchical readings and/or viewing practices; she leaves no room for a stable politics or identity. ~'\s Troyano/Tropicana shifts from memories to histories to stories and as she perfected her hybrid lesbian drag (woman dragging woman and woman dragging man dragging woman), Troyano/Tropicana exposed complexities in identity politics of the feminist, lesbian, and Latina. Feminists and feminist It>bianc; within her communin:, as seen in the earlier quote, often misunderstood rroyano/Tropicana's exploration between identifications. These feminist mis-readings were due to a lack of openness to Troyano/Tropicana's contradictory identifications- the "multi, multi, multi." During the sex wars, feminist identity politics became the essence of the movements, the beliefs, the political goals, and theoretical discourses: "Identity politics has, 92 for many ... emerge[d] as the quintessential form of the struggle for recognition and inclusion. It has seemed to provide precisely that combination of community and contest, of security and change, capable of addressing the concerns of those who have been excluded in contemporary democratic societies" (Dean 48). However, for Troyano/Tropicana and other lesbian campers, feminist identity politics during the sex wars meant exclusion from community and rejection of desires. There is no doubt that the feminist sex wars and their wider-reaching counterpart, the US culture wars, put feminism in survival mode politically. Identity politics as well as an emphasis on lifestyle and public unity became more strident within the movement. What it meant to be a woman, feminist, ancllesbian was changing and, for mainstream feminism, the tangible realities of women, particularly lesbians, \-vere ignored or deemed problematic. Feminist and Poet Adrienne Rich acknowledged the increasingly problematic relationship between feminism and lesbianism in her 1980 SZgl1S article, stating that one of her concerns was "the virtual or total neglect of lesbian existence in a wide range of writings, including feminist scholarship" (632). Mainstream feminism recognized lesbianism as theory or a utopian abstraction. Feminist scholar Carol Denver explains, "Lesbianism, when it enters into definitions of.Jt~lJlil1i.r1JJ at all, enters ahnost exclusively as a political ideal, undistinguished by any real erotic significance" (24). Therefore, when the WOW Cafe was established in 1982, with its drag parties, its erotic balls, and its celebration of the butch-femme couple, the Cafe became a refuge, "stolen from heterosexual nightmares: lesbians as hypersexual, as unrepentant out-laws, vampires, shameless deviants, and perverts" (Hughes C/i/1Vo/e.r 18). The \\'0\\' Cafe and the performances at the \X!O\X! Cafe became necessities for lesbians in and out of New York City. In her introduction to Split Brite/le.r: Le.dJiall PradicelFemil7iJ! 93 Pe~forll1an(e, Sue Ellen Case states, "The stage is theirs [Shaw's and \\!eaver'sJ and the stage is the111, The\' have lived thell' lives and their relationship on the stage, ll11provising it into episodes and schrick for almost t\venty years. They are the lesbian actors of their time" (34), Unfortunately, for some admirers, the sanctity of the WOW Cafe - its brand of lesbian subjectivity and butch-femme performativities-developed into its own determined lesbian institution. The following is one such example of how lesbian camp's greatest champions become critics and all because lesbian cam.p continues to remain incongruous, to exploit and explore from the inside out, and to reject authemicit:y, In her interview with Holly Hughes, Rebecca Schneider asks Hughes about substantial feminist concerns-identity and reception-as well as a lesbian concern? assimilation-specifically regarding Hughes's collaboration with Split Britches in Dress Stlits to Hire. Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver asked Hughes to write Dre.r.r Stlits to Hire. The production prelniered at PS 122 in 1987. From its opening at PS 122, it would travel around New York City and then the L'nited States. In 1988, DreJS Sitits to FJin' was presented at the University of j\vIichigan: SCHNEIDER: When Dress Stlits was at ~fichigan l'niversity in Ann Arbor, there was a discussion afterward in which Sue-Ellen Case made the point that perhaps the piece would be better served performed exclusively for women. The argUlTlent was that the context of the academy-in the lap, so to speak, of dominant ideology? undermined the radical content of the play. And that for straight audiences it became ... entertainn1ent; that straight audiences and specifically male in that context couldn't somehow "read" the piece correctly. What do you think? (176) 94 The Michigan University argument Schneider referred to was Sue Ellen Case's criticism of the reception of Dre.r.r SNits to Hire at Michigan University. While initially, from Case's perspective, Hughes was questioning whether lesbian performance could leave the ghetto, Hughes saw it as an opportunity to expose the rigidity of lesbian identity politic practices, CTcn from the lesbian feminists like Suc Ellcn Case: "And then the really bad news, I'm not a lesbian, I don't meet the entrance requirements as established by Sue-Ellen Case. \X/hat a shock to my girlfriend. And what a way to get the news-from the highest authority on true Orthodox Lesbianism, Ms. Case" (Case and Hughes 17). Hughes's response to Case is more about disrupting the rigidity of lesbian and feminist icknrin' than it is about "doing it right." (\Vhat is the proper form of writing for a lesbian playwright? How does one become a "proper lesbian"?) Hughes wants her plays to move beyond the lesbian ghetto and speaks to the reception of her productions: I have to put my work in challenging venues. It has to stand up as art and I don't believe that it's something so fragile that people will-I mean, it's not going to be performed in the middle of Independence Plaza, but I feel like ... I don't know that there is a straight male audience. I think that you can be noticed by the mainstream and not coopted. (Schneider and Hughes 177) DIl!s.r SNits to Hin? became the occasion upon which feminists and lesbians debated identity and reception. Performance studies professor Gwendolyn Alker, in her review of the revival of Drm SNits to Hire in 2005, emphasizes: Such exchanges [between Case and Hughes], along with numerous other writings by Kate Davy, 'Rebecca Schneider, Lynda Hart, and Vivian l'vt Patraka, placcd DIns Sm'ts, and the \\lork of Holly Hughes and Split Britches more broadly, at the center of 95 some of the most rich and performative battles on appropriation, reception, and identity in feminist performance during the late 1980s and early 1990s, (106) The discourse surrounding Dre,,',,' SuilJ' to Hire in many ways epitomizes the feminist "sex wars," On the one hand, feminists are worried about presenting a unified front in the larger cultural arena; Case expresses her reticence for openly discussing lesbian feminist politics in a larger medium" "I am not certain that a debate among feminists (worse, lesbians) should appear outside of journals specifically allied with the movement and the critique (such as SigllJ or [.f?'omen and Pezformance) , . ," ("A Case Concerning Hughes" 10), while on the other hand fervcntly disagreeing to the degree that one's identifications are denied, "Postmodern slippage is one thing and lesbian sexuality on a banana peel is another, For me, Hughes's interview and play beg the questions of what is a lesbian play and how that is determined" (Case and Hughes 11). Additionally, reception and assimilation of lesbian performances revolves heavily around the issues of pornography and coercion. The SchnCldcr/ Hughcs intcryicw as \Vell as Kate Davy's article Reading Pmllbe Tlelem.re,\.'!/(t! IlJJpera/i/1e: "Dn'J'y SuilJ 10Hin ", Jill Dolan's DeJire (Joak(!{! i/1 a Tmlebmtll, and Elinor Fuch's Staging tbe ObJeene B04y, played a large role in TDR's Spring 1989 volume revolving around sexuality and performance (tlle other journal articles explored the work of Annie Sprinkle and Frank Moore). In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was slapped with content-based restrictions from Congress, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, canceled Robert ~1applethorpe'sTbe Petfett lvloment exhibit, fearing that they would no longer be eligible for funding if the exhibit continued. The line between art and pornography was being drawn with the fenlliust sex wars in the middle of it all. Case, while watching DreJJ SHilJ to Hire at the University of Michigan, worried about: 96 a large number of students who were either on dates, or at least appeared to be sitting in gendered pairs, watching actors I had always admired generally accompanied by lesbian hoots and whistles.... I wonder what some young male students saw when \veaver and Shaw came on in their feathered boas, high heels, and garter belts. \'Vhat was the men's frame of reference for these images?" ("A Case Concerning Hughes" 11) Obviously, Case was worried about the reception of the play having more to do with prurient interest and objectification of \"V'eaver and Shaw: "Tardily, I became a\-vare.... I was dismayed at the glee of the audience, who seemed challenged by nothing and entertained by lTmch" ("A Case Concerning Hughes" 12). But could it be that it was Case who was unable to move behind her identity politics and definitions in order to embrace the complexities and contradictions within DreJJ SttitJ to Hire? Dfl?JJ Suits to Flire takes place in a slTlall storefront, a clothing rental boutique in New York City. As the audience enters the auditorium, we are able to view the set. It is intimate, cramped-almost-with racks of clothing surrounding shop windows. The shop has several windows, but the largest windo\-v is placed downstage and is open, allowing the audience to peer into the shop. The open window differs from the others, which are covered but opened and closed throughout the performance. The set designer, Joni Wong (who also designed the lighting), exposes not only the metaphoric fourth wall with her set design, but disrupts the reading and viewing practices of the audience as well. Wong's design exposes the possibilities of prurient viewing through coercing us (the audience) into "peeking." We are clearly about to embark on a private occasion between two women, but we have been caught with our hand in the cookie jar-we are seen being seen. 97 There is little doubt that, while touring, productions change. Even as the setting, lighting, costumes, and blocking are masterfully reproduced and reestablished within the new ,-enue, in some cases the size and shape of the venue do not allow for the complete transformation of the space. Both Kate Davy and Sue Ellen Case speak to the differences of the intimate WOW Cafe, PS 122, or \XTomen's Interart, and the "Wagnerian 'mystic gulf' of the University of Michigan presentation that Davy describes in Reading Past tbe HeteroJe.'(tla! Impemtiz;e: ''Dnm StlitJ to Hire" (163). E,ren Alker, at Split Britches' twenty-fifth anniversary production of ])1'1'.1.1 SuilJ/or Hi,T, discusses the importance of space for this particular pHxlucrion: "Dn'JJ Slfi!J thrives on the suffocating and empo\vering nature of intimacy, both between its two characters and with the audience" (109). The lack of intimacy because of the theater at the University of Michigan should have been more prominent within Case and Davy's discourse of reception that evening. While Davy admits, "Because Shaw could not close the gap and indicate precisely the spectators she was addressing, it was not difficult to apply a dominant culture model, read from that perspective, and engage in fetishizing the image" ("Reading Past the Heterosexual Imperative" 163), she continues in the footnote, "Since some felt the university context radically reshaped the reception of DreJJ StlitJ, it was suggested that the piece be performed exclusively in lesbian or women-only performance spaces.... The production circumstances in Ann Arbor made manifest the risk involved in that move [CHlt of the lesbian ghetto]" ("Reading Past the Heterosexual Imperative" 168). But the ghetto does not guarantee an acti,-ated spectatorship even if the ghetto provides common socio-historical context, shared language, and empathy - the very things lesbian camp (de)constructs - it is the production elements and performance strategies that ultimately transform the occasion into community. And with success in other academic 98 settings, such as Lancaster University in the L'K and the L;niversity of Texas at Austin, as well as successful performances in diverse performance venues throughout the United States (Milwaukee and Santa Fe) and the United Kingdom (London), it is my belief that the major obstacle between spectator and performer at the University of Michigan performance was not so much the perceived selling out or assitnilation of Holly Hughes, Lois Weaver, and Peggy Shaw, but rather the ill-chosen performance space. Let me be clear, DreJJ SttitJ to Hire is a transformative production. It uses lesbian camp strategies is a variety of ways (to be discussed shortly); however, it is itnportant not only to the feminist discourse revolving around reception and the feminist "sex wars," but the University of Michigan experience is also valuable to the lesbian camp artists as they explore performance and an activated spectatorship. It has become plainly obvious that many of the camp strategies employed in Dn'YJ SlfilJ 10E-:Tire did not work in a large performance venue. Had the production been able to create a more intimate setting ? possibilities included moving the entire production into the space between the stage and the audience, or moving the audience onto the stage, or moving the performance to a smaller, less formal venue - the discourses revolving around assimilation and reception would have been vcry different. Hughes's, \veaver's, and Shaw's endeavor to step outside the lesbian ghetto, to perform for diverse audiences is not a step back into the closet nor is it a determination of success. The performers' move out of the ghetto, out of the safety of their communities, frankly, comes down to responsibility. The Combahee River Collective said it most succinctly, "\X!e realize that the onlv people who care enough about us to work consistently felr our liberation is us" ("The Combahee River Collective" 212). These performers 99 produced their lives, their truths, their experiences in diverse venues because it was political, because it was necessary. In the afterword to Tbe ROlftledge Rpader in Gender and Petjor7J2ance, \Veaver explains, "\ve act out of necessity, we transform accidents and obstacles into transforming solitions ... Art enables us to imagine ourselves out of current situations. \YJe have only begun to imagine the potentiaL .. " (304). However, wrapped up in Case's, and to a lesser extent Davy's, anxiety over lesbian performance reception outside the confInes of feminist and/or lesbian venues is pornography. And one can easily find several examples of where "misreading," as Day]? calls it, could potentially happen in DreJJ SttitJ to Hire. One such example happens midway through the performance, when \\?eaver plays to the pornographic as her character dons a "filmy peignoir" and begins to sing (the tune reminiscent of Tbe Tbreepemty Opmis "Pirate Jenny"): Bugs are bitin' Fish are jumpin' When my baby starts a humpin' me. Helt cross buns Always beg for jam Every beaver Needs a beaver dam. Taste of fIsh, Taste of chicken, Don't taste like the girl I'm lickin. She puts the cunt back in country, Pulls the rug out from under me. 100 In case you are \vcmdering, She can put the what she wants in me ... (Hughes Oit j\Totcs 140-141) The lesbian desire cannot be contained or ignored. And wIllie lesbian sex is one of the more popular themes in heterosexual pornography, Dress SNits does not ignore the heterosexual prurient or pornographic possibility. Instead, Dress SNitS uses popular camp strategies to disrupt the heteronormative gaze: incongruous juxtaposition between "Pirate Jenny" tune and the song's words and the striptease act lacking the striptease ("actions are t1irtatious I/J (/ she were stripping" [Oit NotfJ 140]). The song purposely straddles the border between the sexy and the bawdy, using lesbian double entendres to disrupt the heteronormative gaze while also complicating lesbian sex and sexuality, going beyond the lickin' to include the stickin'-DIT'sJ Sm/s is unforgiving to all. But why does pornography matter? In 1990, Holly Hughes along with three other artists (K.aren Finley, Tim Miller, and John Fleck) were defunded from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). By defunded, I mean that after the artists proposals were successful in the peer review process, the director of the NEA, John Frohnmayer rejected the peer review boards recommendation, pulling the funds from the four artists. Historian Richard ~leyer describes the afterl11.ath: "In the wake of Frohnmayer's decision, Republican politicians and fundamentalist preachers attacked the work of these four performers (now referred to as the 'NEA Four') as indecent, obscene, and pornographic" (544). Hughes', as well as the other WOW Cafe performers', ,vork was deemed pornographic and illegitimate but more importantly, since their work dealt with their desires, their fears, their dreams, the pornography debates affected lesbian representation. Jill Dolan succinctly states, "Pornography is an important locus for feminist critical thought because it provides a site 101 for the intersection of feminist sexual politics and the politics of representation" ("Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat" 59). And while Dolan does not actively participate in the Dre.r.r Slfi;, diSCClur"e, she does build on Teresa de Lauretis' article "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation," as do Case and Davy in their articles "Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic" and "Fe/Male Impersonation: The Discourse of Camp" (respectively). As discussed in Chapter II, Case and Davy agree with Dolan's assertion that lesbian performance and spectatorship have potential to disrupt the heteronormative gaze because, "this context allows lesbian desire to circulate as the motivating representational term. The subject/ object relations that u-ap women performers and spectators as comm.odities in a heterosexual context dissolve. The lesbian subject ... disrupts dominant cultural discourse representation mandates" (Dolan "Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat" 63-64). For all three critics, the \\70\\1 Cafe and other lesbian performance venues become the site for exploration of lesbian subjectivities, representations, and spectatorship: Sue Ellen Case focuses on the burch-femme relationship; and Kate Davy also explores the butch? femrne relationship in perfonnance as well as distinctly lesbian metaphors, scenarios, and conventions. However, Dolan, at this point, while excited about the utopian possibilities of lesbian spectatorship warns, "Changing the shape of desire from heterosexual to lesbian won't get the entixe crisis of representation off our backs. There is no universal lesbian spectator to whom each lesbian representation will provide the embodiment of the same lesbian desire. Sexuality, and desire, and lesbian subjects are more complicated than that" ("Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat" 65). And again, lesbian artists aren't just interested in performing in their own communities. Lesbian performance artist Lisa Ivon insists, "We 102 UesbiansJ learned then that part of the responsibility for bringing lesbian work to a larger audience lay with us" ("A Straight Mind"). As stated earlier, DreJJ SttitJ, like many lesbian camp performances, establishes an activated audience immediately through its set design. The audience, entering the auditori1.U11/performance space cannot simply take a voyeuristic appr~ach in the atmosphere creared b\' \\long, .\ddirionalh', as the audience enters, there is illumination for the spectator ro find her/his seat, The illumination acts not only as a safety mechanism but as a type of social barometer as well. The spectator cannot enter as an individual in the dark; rather s/he is entering into a community of the occasion. \'Vhile this type of illumination is standard convention within performance practices, it becomes an exa~lSerated social mechanism due to \'Vong's scenic choice of windows that expose the spectator as voyeur. We take our seats, enrering into a world that \V'ong has created for us; a world that is estranged with the simultaneous need to look and be looked at. This particular estrangement, the watcher being watched, is consistent throughout DreJJ SttitJ to Hire; the spectator is coerced into subverting the heteronormative gaze. The lights fade out of preshow. As the lights fade up on the stage, the front of the house is dark. Two women are scared-one facing upstage and one facing downstage. They are dressed in similar robes, i\fter silcnth' toasting onc another with a glass of sherry, the woman facing downstage begins to sing. Slowly she begins to dress: one stocking and then the other. She glances up to see the other looking. The second's look is filled with desire. The first stops dressing and returns the look, and begins to dress again. The first woman is interrupted by death; however, the occasion repeats itself moments later. The woman facing downstage begins to dress again. As she dresses she tells a story, her story-the story of 103 herself and her mother; as she dresses she rises placing one leg after the other onto the chair, snapping her stockings into place, SlTlOothing her stockings down her leg. She stares at the other woman who is staring back at her. Desire oozes from their looks. Davy describes moments like this in Dress SlIits as locating, "the site and recipient of the gaze as feminine ... the apparatus is niade aware of itself-woman looks back" ("Reacting Past the Heterosexual Imperative" 157). The act of looking back (re)establishes subjectivity in the inclividual, but in the case of performance the act of looking back disrupts the gaze, as a connection is made between performer and spectator. The spectator is seen looking and, as Da\)" stated, the appararus in n:pcJsecl. In the case of Dress Snil.r, it is more than just woman looking back, it is Peggy Sha\v/Deeluxe looking back; it is lesbian returning the look. Therefore, the heteronormative gaze is disrupted and lesbian subjectivity is (re)claimed. Dress Sm"ts to Hire also engages in the disruption of identity politics and lesbian butch? felmne roles. Shaw, Weaver, ancl Hughes's exploration of butch-femme and their destabilization of identities is what I fInd most fascinating about DrcJs SItz'tJ to Hire, but it is also, I believe, what frustrated Sue Ellen Case. For Case, the lack of traditiollalbutch-femme roles seemed to result from Hughes's, Shaw's, and \Veaver's escape from the lesbian ghetto. They were selling out. However, as Hughes points out in her interview with Schneider, "I don't think Michigan and Dee1uxe are two fenul1es.... Look at Peggy Shaw! She's wearing a dress but look at her body, man! She's like drop dead Martina!" (176). For Hughes, Shaw, and \X'em-er, DIl'J.' SlIil., was about the exploration of role playing: butch, femme, and drag. In her pioneering article, "Tow'ards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic," Sue Ellen Case states, "The closet has given us camp-the style, the cliscourse, the /JJiJC el1 JCCI'lC of butch- femme roles"(189). Case's radical view of butch-femme and her own identity politic of butch 104 materialist feminist lesbian were considered radical in the 1970s and early 1980s feminism. But Case, like many feminist lesbians in her position, found themseh'es caught between the performances of lesbian camp and the identity politic of butch-femme. In the case of Dress St/its to Hire, Hughes, \Xleaver, and Shaw genderfucked not only the heteronormative unities of gender, sex, and sexuality, but the lesbian ones as well. Butch-femme lesbians suffered a great deal of criticism from both their feminist and lesbian allies throughout the 1970s and 80s. Their (butch-femmes) relationships had begun to be read as impersonations of classic heterosexual normativity: the butches wore the pants, typically worked in blue collar manufacturing positions (if they could get a job), and sexually pleased their femmes, while the femmes had the ability to find white collar jobs, and pass as heterosexual women-appearance was everything.36 And while it is possible that the androgvnous movement 'vvithin lesbian feminism began as an opportunity to break away from the seeminglY stringent roles elf the butch-femmes, it turned into an all out crusade to illegitimate the butch-femme lesbian. Butch-femme relationships were dangerous to the feminist fnovement because they were visible representations of lesbian desire. Viewing a butch-fenune couple holding hands at a feminist march could create a public relations nightmare for many mainstream feminist groups. Butches and femmes were damned if they did and damned if they didn't; by herself, she \vould face the ridicule as either a male wannabe or an anti-feminist conformist. Joan Nestle, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives-an archive devoted to gathering and 36 For further reading on pre 1960s lesbian butch-femme relationships see Elizabeth Lapovsky and :'vIadeline D. Davis Kennedy, BootJ (!lLeat!Je!~ S'lippn:.. qlGold: The [-1IJtOl)' ola LeJbirl/i COlJIlJllIliity (New York: Rourlcdgc, 1()93). 105 preserving records of lesbian culture-attended the Barnard conference, where she called out the feminist attacks of butch-fenU11e lesbians, stating: The real problem here is that we stopped asking questions too early in the lesbian and feminist movement, and rushed to erect what appeared to be answers into the formidable and rigid artifice that we have now. Our contemporary lack of curiosity also affects our view of the past. \X1e don't ask butch-fem women who they are; we tell them. ("The Femme Question" 234) In her conference presentation, Tbe Femme Que.rtioJl, Nestle was fighting the cultural definitions of woman and lesbian, as she spoke to the desires of lesbians (as seen through her experiences as a fenune) as something more than a utopian theory but of a messy, difficult, corporeal history. She began to expose the misreadings from mainstream feminism through her own personal experiences as a femme as well as through her research at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Nestle spoke to tlle performativity of roles, specifically stating that they were not copies of heterosexual couplings, but "a lesbian language of stance, dress, gc'turc, love, courage, and autonomy"(232). She spoke to a dialogue that would later inform not only the academy but the performing arts and liberatot)' politics for decades. Nestle, maybe not as theoretically eloquent as Judith Butler, exposed gender as a performance and, in her case, one closely aligned with sexual desire. Butler would later aid Nestle's argument, stating, "Disciplinary productions of gender effects a false stabilizations of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and regulations of sexuality"(GeJ1der Trouble 135). i'-i estle made feminists and social conservatives alike uncomfortable with the erotic dance she portrayed, specifically between herself and her butch lover, as well as generally between the outwardly gendered lesbians as she spoke of the determination to walk between the lines of 106 iconic beaut\', passing, and the pleasures of the female body not for purposes of reproduction, but as "nustresses of discrepancies, knowing that resistance lies in the change of context" (Nestle "The Femme Question" 236). Discrepancies and changing contexts form the beginning of a consciousness of gender which acknowledges gender as a flexible construct instead of natural phenomenon. Butler states it best when she exclaims: :-\s imitations "vhich effectively displace the meaning of the original, they imitate the myth of originality itself. In the place of an original identification which serves as a deternuning cause, gender identity nught be reconceived as a personal/cultural history of received meanings subject to a set of inutative practices which refer laterally to other imitations which, jointly, construct the illusion of a primary and interior gendered self or parody of mechanism of that construction. (Gmder Trouble 138) Like felTlale impersonation in gay iTlale culture, butch women's outward appearances possess codes; but unlike the female impersonator, the butch code signals her attraction to a certain type of woman and her desire for tasting lipstick in the kiss, the soft skin of her face, the long nails against her back, or the long hair pressed against the pillow. Nestle believes that butch WC1111en don't want to impersonate men, nor do they want to be male; instead, butch women are physically demonstrating their desire through a specific system of signs for other women. Femme women have sinlliar capabilities of exposing the heterosexual paradigm because they dissolve normative culture's established interpretation of woman and lesbian. Femmes defy the stereotype of the frumpy lesbian, confront the style of flannel, and exude sex and sexuality, but not for the pleasure of men. To be visible, to expose that which 107 society would rather sweep under the rug, is not to conform. The butch-femme couple is a blatant denial of heterosexual normativity cuhTunating in expanding definitions of woman, broadening identities of lesbian, and asserting woman as sexual beings. Split Britches and Holly Hughes work through butch-femme roles as well as lesbian sexualir\' in Dn'JJ JllitJ to [Jill' with a twist. Hughes wrote this play for Lois \X!eaver and Pegg\' Shaw. DtuJ JHitJ to Hire is a love story. It is as much an exploration of \X/eaver and Shaw's relationship off stage as it is onstage. Hughes explains, "First of all, the fact that Lois and Peggy had been lovers for years removed my primary motivation for writing: getting girls. It was hard for me to imagine why someone would go to all the work to write a play if there was absolutely no chance she would get laid as a result. \'Vhat was the point" (elit NoteJ 113? 14). Hughes, Sha"v, and \Xi'emTer complicate the visual codes of butch-femme as they explore lesbian sexuality through intlnite possibilities. In typical lesbian camp fashion, Dre.r.r JJlilJ becomes an exploration of lesbian culture from the inside out, as it exposes dynamics of power, desire, and control within a lesbian relationship. As stated earlier, the performance begins with the performers-Shaw as Deeluxe and \Xieaver as ;\1ichigan-seated next to one another, a small table with two glass of sherry between them. Michigan's chair faces upstage while Deeluxe's chair faces downstage. \X'hile sitting opposite one another, we notice that they are dressed similarly in heavy dressing gowns. After a silent toast between one another, Deeluxe sets her glass down and begins to put on a pair of stockings while singing about the things she would like to do to herself: fill her mouth with red \vine, her head with cement, her nose with cocaine. Her act of dressing is subverted by her singing. The contrast between her deep, rough vocalization and the silky smoothness of the stockings betrays a stable identity. As she 108 stands, we are again taken with the contrast between her surface femininity and the towering (over si" feet in heels) woman \vith strong facial features, legs, and arms. Deeluxe betrays the silk stockings and garter-is she in drag? It is still unclear as the dressing ritual is explicit-a ritual repeated again even in performance. It is not until Deeluxe is strangled with her own hand (we learn that later it is Little Peter, a man, inhabiting Dee!uxe's arm that has strangled her) that we begin to see the complexity of this production. In fact, \Veaver/Michigan opens a direct line of communication with the audience. Does this moment embrace the Split Britches' tradition of "stepping out"-when actor drops character in order to deal \.vith an emotional or political moment within the script-or is it Michigan who sees us (the audience) when she speaks to Deeluxe's hand: "I suppose you know what this will mean. There will be no show. She will be unable to do tl1e show. You're not going to like this" (Hughes Clit SoteJ 116). Weaver/ Michigan's dialogue places the spectators in an activated position; \\hile looking through the shop \vindow (the fourth wall): \Veaver/Michigan has brought us into her world, acknowledging our existence, and not allowing us to be passively looking. But the act does more than expose our complicity of looking, \Xieaver/Michigan is establishing a contract between the performance and the spectators; she is giving us permission to create identifications with the occasions presented within the performance? to acknowledge our O\vn contradictions, our own identity politics, our O\vn desires and needs. Deeluxe's death forces Michigan to contact the authorities . .t'.-lichigan does so on a pink telephone minus its cord and receiver (another clue into their confined lives): There's a man in here I can't say if he's dangerous or not. I don't know any other man so I can't compare through the door! He lives with us. More with her than 109 with me. Me, this man, and the body ... yes, there certainly is a body ... did I discover it? Many years ago. I first discovered the body in the Hotel Universal in Salamanca. A single light bulb. The light came in through the window. The streets were lit by little oranges. The oranges were perfect and bitter. In this light I lay down on the bed and discovered the body. Especially the legs. She's part palomino. In the legs, pure palomino. Do you know what a palomino is? ... a racehorse covered in Parmesan cheese, yes. That's her. And after the fIrst time I would discover the body again and again. And ever when I hate her, I love the body ... who does the body belong to? Pardv to me. It belongs to her. I usually say she's my sister, and most of the time we are sisters. Sometimes we're even worse.... (Hughes eli! NoteJ 116-17) Through her conversation with the authorities, lvIichigan reveals her desire for Deeluxe. Once again, Hughes, Weaver, and Shaw confront the invisibility of lesbian desire that existed in mainstream feminism. They use inlages of racehorses and oranges to express the intensity of desire and sexuality. When Michigan is c1airning her partial ownership of Deeluxe's body, it is not about a hierarchical power; instead it is about pleasure-the pleasure they receive from one another ~l11d tfichigan's ownership of her pleasures with Deeluxe. \Ve must not mistake the lack of hierarchical power as a synonym for no power; rather what }VIichigan is exposing is a non-hierarchical, non gender-based power that derives from their sexuality and desire for one another. Traditional butch-femme roles possessed meanings within their gender performativity: butch lovers were supposed to be the leaders/ pleasers in bed while the femme role was to be pleased. Lesbians often joke amongst themselves about the possibility of the gendered role reversals in and out of the bedroom with the saying, "butch in the streets is femme in the sheets." I\fichigan's monologue is just 110 the beginning of the Dre.u SttitJ disruption of the strict identity politics of butch-femme, as moments later I\Iichigan would continue: Is it cold in here or is it me? (To Deeluxe) Oh, it's you. You should relax. You know there are worse things in New York than being killed by someone who loves you. Like trying to cash a check! Are you mad at me because I said your body belongs to me? (JVIichigan kneels down and opens Deeluxe's robe.) Remember the night we became sisters? I looked out and there were no more stars. The sky was full of teeth. Blue and sharp, and it was closing in around us. Our only chance was to become twins. To be swallowed whole. But being twins slowed us down. People don't rent dress suits from twins. But then there was always the body to come back to. I'm not going to look at you any longer. I got to look where I am going. I never thought I would have to go al1\'\vhere. (Hughes Oit "\oteJ 11 7) This time, pmver over Decluxe's body is direct. As she opens Deeluxe's robe, she begins to caress and then undress Deeluxe, pulling her shoes off one at a time, unsnapping her garters, peeling her nylons off her legs. She is in control of Deeluxe's body and the air is highly charged with Michigan's desires. Michigan is not mimicking a ritual body cleansing; she is lusting after Deeluxe. \Iichigan continues performing between the visible and invisible, using familiar terms to describe her affair with Deeluxe. Lesbians are often asked if they are sisters, as it is often difficult for heteronormative culture to read honlOsexuality. When two won-len lovers are in public, while they may not hold hands or make out on the street corner, people recognize the familiarity they have with one another. "Sisters" becomes the easiest and safest III connection heteronormative culture can make. But Dress SNits to Hire takes sisterhood one step further, allowing lesbian, feminist, and heteronormative connotations of sister to entangle. There is the dynamic of Michigan speaking to the police, potentially wanting it to appear that they were sisters. There is also a facet of respect between i\Hchigan and Deeluxe ("mClS( of rhe rime \\ie arc sisrers"), potentially meaning that there is love and respect even through disagreement-they bccome family. At the same time, Michigan cannot let either of those two sit comfortably; instead preferring to make visible lesbian desire, "Sometimes we're even worse...." In the latter part of the monologue, Michigan directly correlates sisterhood with lesbian desire as she remembers the night they becamc lovers. This night was different than the nighr at the Hotel Cniversal. It was not tender or sensual. This night becomes a metaphor for a partnered life of a lesbian: turbulent and intense, animalistic, dense, and raw. It was intimidating and yet exciting. And their actions held consequences, but ones that Michigan was willing to work through so long as "there was always the body to come back to." Hut Deeluxe's body is complicated. As stated earlier, she gives off contesting signs. \Vhen Michigan states, "There's a man in here ... I can't say if he's dangerous or not. I don't know any other man so I can't compare ... through the door! He lives with us. More with her than with me," she is referring to Little Peter, embodied in Deeluxe's hand, but the audience has yet to be introduced to Little Peter. Just as in Shaw's other performances, the layering of character upon character upon individual disrupts any notion of stability. And in the case of this scene in Dress Suits, Shaw layers Deeluxe and "the man" upon herself, which results in a masculine female to feminine female to male drag performance. Once again, 112 DrcJJ Slfllr is exposing the contradictions and tensions within lesbian and feminist identity politics as the\' layer "the man" with multiple points of identification. For some, "the man" will be read as a metaphor for the greater culture's mores on lesbianism: the inverted female. For others, it may be the deeper, darker side to lesbian identity: the violent butch lover. But it is also a form of masculinity Deeluxe has deep inside her that she has yet to reconcile. The above scene explores the theoretical-One i.s Not Bom a rVoJJJal7-through the gender fucking of Deeluxe and l\Tichigan. For as l\foniclue \vittig states in an article titled the same, "lesbian is the only concept I know of \\'hieh is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject Oesbian) is 170t a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man" (20). Nor is lesbian a man. The frontier by which lesbians find themselves, navigating amongst the masculine/feminine, \X1o/Man, and male/female dichotomies, is placed in tension within one another throughout DreH Sm?tJ. DreH SuitJ uses repetition (Deeluxe's dressing) to expose the unities of gender, sex, and sexuality as false. Deeluxe's unities are constantly shifting, resting only for moments on gender or sexual play that is incongruously juxtaposed with her last moment. The butch-femme coupling of Shaw and Weaver-of what Split Britches was known-still exits but is, at the same time, being dismantled through the same expression of desires. l\fichigan and Deeluxe purposely place into tension all identifications, preferring to embrace the conflicts within identifications rather than maintaining the strict identity politics of Case's (and others) butch-femme feminist lesbians. DreH Suits, as with the majority of lesbian camp performances, refuses to let one institution take the place of another. Hughes confirms the need to challenge our own assumptions in her response to Case: ------------- 113 Ms. Case is very clear about this: lesbianism" is a club.... Thank you for showing us that lesbianism is a tree house looking down on domllant culture's backyard, that patriarchal desert. Everybody wants in, you know how it is these days, everyone wants in to our club. We've got to keep the entrance requirements stiff to keep out the bad clement" ... 0 please, Ms. Case, let me into the club! I know I'm a naughty, naughty bisexual and a professional dominatrix to boot.... Ms. Case, YOU know what it's like to get kicked out of the lesbian clubhouse. Didn't you identify yourself as a butch? But my dear Ms. Case. Ten years ago that was taboo in the clubhouse.... ("A Case Concerning Hughes" 15-16) DIVJJ JllitJ to Hin? was a timely production. Case and, to a lesser extent, Davy bristled at the production because it refused to alJow traditional butch-femme roles to be the status quo. Case writes, "Although, at the time, my objection had strictly to do with the context of reception of the piece, there was also something in the text itself that disturbed me and foregrounded the conditions of reception ... In other words, DIVJJ JllitJ does not seem to grow out of a feminist, or lesbian tradition of writing" ("A Case Concerning Hughes" 10? Il). DrfJJ 511ilJ revealed a much more complex lesbian subjectivity than Case or Davy had anticipated. It, in many ways, exposed Hughes'S, Shaw's, and 'Xleaver's own dance between butch-femme as performance and political strategy, and butch-femme as performativity of their desire and sexualities. Little Peter's fIrst vocal appearance continues to contribute to the butch-femme discourse Drc.r.r JllitJ has established. From Deeluxe's hand comes Little Peter with severity in word ,tnd aetic)!1. The hand pulls at Decluxe's hair, slaps her face, and fondles her body. Little Peter's violence and aggresslon does little to draw Deeluxe to him; instead Michigan 114 explains, "That tiger was getting the best of Little Peter, and he didn't even know it. We just called her a tiger 'cause there \veren't words for what she was. Half woman, half something weird. French, maybe. All cat" (Hughes Oit SoteJ 123). This tiger inside of Deeluxe scared her. When Michigan asked for her hand, Deeluxe would not give her the right hand, Little Peter's hand. She denies to Michigan that it is her hand even after Michigan has confronted her: "MICHIGAN. That one you were born with, and this the one you made for yourself. Gin. DEELCXE. It is not 1rune to give. MICHIGAN. \\i'hat? DEELUXE. It's not .tvIY hand! MICHIGAN. What could it be then? [)EELCXE. It could be anything. It works against me. I have no feeling in it. And it's not an "it." It's a he. He does what he wants and \\7hen he \vants. He's an underground river that empties into my heart. (Hughes ClitJ\,7oteJ 124-25) Deeluxe is struggling with her desires toward women, specifically how they manifest themselves. It is as tllOugh she is unable to wade through the complexities of lesbian desire and butch-femme performance. Once again, Shaw does not disguise her butchness even as she layers Deeluxe on top of her performativity, just as \x7eaver's Michigan, while aggressive and stimulated, does not obfuscate her fe1runinity. Therefore, when Deeluxe is overcome with her desire for Michigan, and must first negotiate the territory with Little Peter, the sanctity of butch-femme coding erodes. The disruption becomes more about diffusing butch-femme roles as caricature, preferring to explore the underbelly of lesbian relationships 115 with its shifts in power and performativity that typically remain invisible to the outsider. D1UJ 5uitJ to Hin! "present[ed] a living lesbian relationship on the stage with all of its difficulties and all of its darkness, not just as a celebration" (\Xleaver "Interview with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw"). Dre.fJ SlIitJ to I-iire ends with Michigan and Deeluxe returning to the two chairs. Little Pcrcr has left a note for Deeluxe \V hich begins, "Dear Deeluxe, You asked about the future. Here's the deal: it's gonna be just like the past...." (Hughes Clit NoteJ 150). Only this time as Michigan pours the two glasses of sherry, Deeluxe is sitting the chair facing upstage and Michigan is sitting in the chair facing downstage. Some tl1ings have already begun to change. 116 CHr\PTER V CONCLUSION Sixteen years ago, I had my fIrst experience with lesbian camp, when Holly Hughes arrived on the campus of\Vells College. Her performance of CIt! I\!oteJ changed the direction T rook as an academic, theater practitioner, feminist, and lesbian. She became my hero, the mistress of a feminist lesbian theater that explored feminist and lesbian theories and practices that were complex, messy, incongruous, and political while at the same time humorous, accessible, and joyful. Even as she became the poster child for the religious conservatives' attack on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), homosexuality, and feminism, Hughes channeled her anger and frustration into performances that are brave and, accclrding to Ne\\ YClrk Times reviewer Ben Brantley, "based on equal urges to ingratiate and confront, is often fIercely funny. Her unorthodox use of both verbal and body language can put an energizing spin on the commonplace" (18). As I began to sit in the theaters, performance spaces, lobbies, and classrooms with others from inside and out of my coml11Unities, I began to realize that this type of theater touched more than just me-more than just feminist lesbians. Performances seemed to provoke thought and conversation from diverse communities. Yet the performance criticism I was reading at the time from lesbians and feminists like Kate Davy and Sue Ellen Case did not embrace the diversity found in lesbian camp performances, preferring instead to 117 advocate for the lesbian ,gbetto audience(s) and prioritize the differences between lesbian/gay, lesbian/ feminist, male/ female, masculine/ feminine, heterosexual/homosexual. This study has always been both personal and political. It stems from my deep admiration for Holly Hughes as well as my need to develop what I saw when I sat in the scats, read the scripts, and watched the videos. I was maturing as a lesbian, woman, and scholar as lesbian camp was maturing, and what I saw read and viewed seemed so radically different from the lesbian and/or feminist critics I was reading. Lesbian camp seemed to be leading the charge in a different direction from the feminist and lesbian dramas of Marsha Norman, Beth Henley, Tina Howe, Rachel Rosenthal, Wendy \vasserstein, Carol Churchill, Megan Terry, Jane Chambers, Adrienne Kennedy, or Rosalyn Drexler (aU of whom I respect). In the course of doing this study, I found lesbian camp, like me, to be complicated and filled with contradictions and incongruities. This shIdy did more than just def1l1e lesbian camp, articulate strategies for an activated spectatorship, and dance with lesbian and feminist theories and practices during the feminist sex wars. This study also included a wish to articulate lesbian camp's int1uence on third wave feminist and queer thought. This study has only begun to explore the ways in which queer performances in the 21' Century engage [heir spectators. Possibilities for further study include exploration of an activated spectatorship and citizenship in alternative performances like poetry slams, modern burlesque, and lesbian standup comedy. \vhat is the relationship between these alternative performances to third-wave feminist and queer theories and practices? \vhat roles do performative technologies like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs play in d1e relationship between feminist and queer thoughts and alternative performances? \X'hat is the 118 relationship between these technologies and the spectators? Are these technologies capable of engaging and audience and creating the potential for an active citizenship? In the follmving paragraphs, I define third-wave feminism and queer thought. I interpret the lesbian ghetto and its precarious position with the \"X!O\"X! Cafe. I return to DreJJ JuitJ to Hire as one occasion upon which the growing tension between queer and feminist readings are problematized, specifically in the queering of butch-femme roles through genderfucking. Lastly, I wonder where lesbian camp is today. I wonder what it is that we as artists and citizens can learn from lesbian camp performances. Feminist activist Rebecca \XIalker popularized the term t!ilrd-jJJtll'Cjt;I!lII1lJI!1 in her 1992 article in MJ. 2\i[(~ga:;./!1c. Walker defiantly ends the article by stating, "I am not a post feminist. I am the Third Wave"("Becoming the Third Wave" 41). Third-wave feminism is a rejection of post-feminism; 37 it is the rejection of the failure of feminism and the rejection of idea that there is no need for feminism. Third-wave feminism uses the foundation created by second- wave feminists and assumes certain rights and privileges won by second wave feminists (feminism is seen as a birthright). At the same time, it rejects second-wave feminism through disidentification "vith the earlier movement. "The identificatory relationship between second- and third-wave feminists, however, has as much to do with disidentifying as it does with identifying" (Henry 26). Third-wave feminists struggle with balancing political action with identir:' politics. Rebecca \V'alker explains that third-wave feminists, fear that the identity will dictate and regulate our lives, instantaneously pitting us against someone, forcing us to choose inflexible and unchanging sides, female 37 For a closer look at the history and use of post-feminism, please read, Astrid Henry, l'Jot lv?y Alot/Jers Sister: Gemt'atioltal Coltflict altd Third-U7 tllJe Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004). 119 against male, back against white, oppressed against oppressor. ... For us the lines between Us and Them are often blurred, and as a result we find ourselves seeking to create identities that accommodate ambiguity and our multiple positionalities: including more than excluding, exploring more than defining, searching more than arriving. (To Be Real: Tclli;Zg the Trlltb and Cb{/f~gilZg tbe Ftl(e o/FeminiJm xxxiii) Disidentificatory strategies within third-wave feminism are a direct (re)consideration of the identity politics of the feminist sex wars. Third-wave feminists wanted and needed to step away from the feminist sex wars' polarizing issues. And due to the polarization of the feminist sex wars within the feminist movement, feminism has, for many women from 18? 40, becolTle the "f-word". In her book, journalist Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner explains: The f-word has been particularly hard hit by stereotype loading and inaccurate USe. .-\s :1 result, "Feminism" no\,\' has an outdated, '70s connotation-instead of shifting with the movelTlent, the terrn has stayed stagnant, becoming one of the m.an1' stumbling blocks for a broad-based contemporary women's movement In bet, a central irony of this rejection of the label is that there is still broad support for the ideas set forth by feminism. (6-7) .\nd so ferninism is changing. How feminisrn provokes political action is changing: "There will never be one platform for action that all women agree on. But that doesn't mean feminism is confused. \XThat it does mean is that feminism is as various as the women it represents. \XThat weaves a feminist movement together is consciousness of inequities and a commitn1.ent to changing them" (Baumgardner and Richards 47-48). How women and men define themselves as feminists is changing. 120 Disidentificatory strategies are also closely aligned with queer methodologies. In her introduction to The QlIeett?stAt1, Jill Dolan states, "Differences, multiplicities, gaps, contradictions, desires, sexualities-that is, the stuff of queerness" (Solomon and Minwalla 2). Queerness is similar to third-wave feminism in its contradictions, incongruities, and disidentifications. However, even as third-wave feminism focuses on cultural differences, exploration, and celebration, the deconstruction of desires is the geography of queerness. Journalist Frank Browning defines the geography of queerness as: Our 19ayJ voice, 'vvith rare exceptions, is a voice of the urban metropolis. Cqy (011117m/lity. gi!!" p/Jctto. ,gi!J! spi/(e, have become common terms in the movement of gay liberation. They speak of the place that gay people have carved out for their survivaL But there is another sense of place, of personal geography, that characterizes the queer impulse, and that is the place we afford homoeroticism in the larger shape of our lives. (2) It is in the tension between community geography and personal geography that I declare, I am a third-\vave queer feminist. I embrace the contradictions found in all aspects of my life. I relish the incongruities of my occasions of privilege and otherness. I take joy in my performativity of gender, sexuality, and sex. I live for the occasions in my life and art that lead to more questions than answers. I see the political in the personal and the passionate. And yet I must deny all that I embrace because as Holly Hughes asks, "Don't you hate it when people ask you why you are what you are? As if you had any idea?" (elit Notes 208). My identifications with remain complicated and scratched. Throughout this study, I have highlighted lesbian camp's strategies of disidentification, its incongruous juxtapositions, and its multiple-multiplicities. Additionally, I 121 e:-:.plore the ways in \\"hich lesbian camp has exposed gender performarivity, a core theory in ciueer theory. And, while I am fascinated and in awe with the work ofJudith Butler, especially regarding gender performativity, I do not understand why she chose to look at gay male drag when exploring her concepts of gender performativity. Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Split Britches were clearly exploring gender performativity well before Butler had begun to wl'ite about it (one of Butler's t1rst articles was published in Tbeatre Jot/mats December 1988 issue, "Perfonnative Acts and Gender Constitution"). \X'as the \X'OW Caft; really a lesbian ghetto theater? Did it only serve its small East Village community? Or was Butler more interested in gay clubbing than lesbian performance? As discussed in Chapter IV, lesbian camp's location in and out of the lesbian ghetto was prominent in Sue Ellen Case and Holly Hughes's public debate of DreJJ Sttits 10 Hilt:. Feminist critic Lara Shalson detlnes ghetto as a term, used to refer to performance in which audience members and performers alike are considered, by themselves and/or others, to be part of a community on the basis of some shared attributes, such as gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. The term "ghetto" is generally pejorative; performance in the ghetto is often stigmatized from both inside and outside the community as unable to make it in the mainstream because its appeal has not pnwed to be uniHTsal. (225) Shalson's definition of the ghetto is exemplary. However, stating that the ghetto is "generally pejorative" is too simplistic a suggestion. While the ghetto "is often stigmatized," it is also, as Shalson states, a community based on shared politics, economies, social characteristics, and injustices. 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