ABSTRACT

This comparative essay analyses the dramatic representation of horses in two early twenty-first-century American plays by Sam Shepard and Sarah Ruhl. Both plays bring a horse figure onto the stage as a prop and couple it to human characters fashioned by the iconography of the American cowboy. While both plays rely heavily on the symbolic power of horses and trope the animal, thus failing to achieve a portrayal of animality initially capable of challenging traditional humanist forms of representation, a close analysis of the materiality of equine presence on the stage shows the overlooked yet essential dramatic function horses have in these plays; that, far from being static symbols, they intervene decisively in the construction and cultural perception of space, gender and values of evolving American cowboy cultures; that their presence contributes to an appreciation of the potential of the horse-human partnership; and that, bringing to the stage their historical heritage as inhabitants of the American frontier, their presence contributes to the reconceptualization of borders making boundaries between humans and animals more permeable.

摘要

这篇比较文章分析了萨姆·谢泼德和莎拉·鲁尔在二十世纪早期的两部美国戏剧中对马的戏剧性表现。这两部剧都将马作为道具搬上舞台，并将其与美国牛仔形象塑造的人物结合起来。虽然这两部戏剧都严重依赖马的象征力量并比喻动物，因此未能实现最初能够挑战传统人文主义表现形式的动物性描绘，但对舞台上马的存在的重要性的仔细分析表明，马在这些戏剧中具有重要的戏剧功能；它们远不是静态的象征，而是决定性地干预空间的构建和文化感知，不断发展的美国牛仔文化的性别和价值观；他们的存在有助于了解马与人伙伴关系的潜力；他们将作为美国边境居民的历史遗产带到舞台上，他们的存在有助于边界的重新概念化，使人类和动物之间的界限更具渗透性。