ABSTRACT

Burlesque is a form that engages ideas of bodily inscription and gender performativity. Through burlesque, I seek to interrogate, critique, iterate and, ultimately, rewrite existing ideologies of femininity. By placing my works in theatrical space, I am able to add layers of both privacy and display, thereby opening up space for alternative narratives and ontologies to be more clearly articulated. In mobilizing existing traditional cultural/religious tropes of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, I examine the space of the creative interval that occurred during the period of becoming burlesque-performer-mother. This process of art-making can be seen as a mimesis of the writing of Luce Irigaray, specifically relation to her interrogations of masculine texts that found the unsaid, the unwritten, and therefore the unignorable. During this intermezzo in my professional creative trajectory, my awareness of ‘femininity’ and perceptions of my place in the symbolic order, all underwent a fundamental shift. This paper describes the conceptualization and realization of a new burlesque performance following the birth of my child in 2017. Utilizing femme theory and a methodology of autotheory, this paper breathes space into the unignorable maternal interval, in my particular specificity.

摘要

滑稽表演是一种结合身体铭文和性别表演的形式。通过滑稽表演，我寻求审问、批判、迭代，并最终改写现有的女性主义意识形态。通过将我的作品放置在戏剧空间中，我能够增加隐私和展示的层次，从而为另类叙事和本体打开更清晰的表达空间。在调动现有的圣母玛利亚和抹大拉的传统文化/宗教比喻时，我考察了在成为滑稽表演者母亲期间发生的创造性间隔的空间。这种艺术创作过程可以看作是对 Luce Irigaray 写作的模仿，特别是与她对男性文本的审问有关，这些文本发现了未说的、未成文的，因此是不可忽视的。在我的专业创作轨迹的这段插曲中，我对“女性气质”的认识和对自己在象征秩序中的位置的看法都发生了根本性的转变。本文描述了 2017 年我的孩子出生后新的滑稽表演的概念化和实现。利用女性理论和自论方法，本文以我的特殊性为不可忽视的母性间隔注入了空间。