Feminist Theory Theater

The FTT was created by Yelena Gluzman, Christina Aushana, Sarah Klein. It consisted in using classic feminist theory texts as if they were theatre scripts that could be represented in a theater play. As they put it:

Feminist Theory Theater - Performance as a Way to Read

What do we do when we read theory? We excavate a text (exegesis), we glean useful remnants (skimming), we put the text in its place (disciplinary lit review). But what methods do we invoke to read personally, to evaluate texts ethically, or to evaluate how those texts speak to the complexities of the sensible worlds in which we find ourselves? How do we read to ourselves when "selves" are sometimes constituted multiply, flexibly, or transiently?

Feminist Theory Theater (FTT) would like to invite you to join our experiment in reading feminist theory. Our starting premises are:

texts happen -- A text never exists until it is performed, whether alone in your office, in a seminar, or on a stage. Each situation makes a difference in the way that a text’s effects congeal. We choose texts in feminist theory because these texts have fought for the importance of collective, situated meaning-making, that is to say, what we call theater.

you can't control performance -- Performance is necessarily and intentionally collective, and therefore resists schematization and simplification. Performance always stages its negotiations between control and resistance, between “plans and situated actions”; theater unfolds in a space of contingency.

structure matters-- By rendering theoretical texts as performance, the structure of the text (the way in which it is constructed, its ellipses, repetitions, pillars, and destinations) may require more attention.

is this a text you want to be in a room with? -- In performing our reading, the implications of the text for relations is materialized through the bodies of the (animate and inanimate) performers, the (animate and inanimate) audience. Are these relations the ones you want to build? Are they the ones you want to live within?