Abstract
The previous chapters explore the ways in which playwrights use fat dramaturgically, either as a plot point or, more subtly, when fat behavior enhances a character or drives the plot forward in some way. With plays such as A Moon for the Misbegotten, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Rose Tattoo I have demonstrated instances in which the playwright did not always explicitly call for a fat actress in the character description, but the roles have traditionally been played by fat actresses who were somehow outside the normative standards of beauty because they embody the qualities the playwright is suggesting with the character. Talented actresses such as Colleen Dewhurst, Maureen Stapleton, Cherry Jones, and Kathleen Turner who, because of their “more-than-ness,” fall outside the heteronormative paradigm or the normal/deviant binary that I have discussed, have sometimes benefited from this casting dynamic.
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Notes
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London, Routledge, 1993), 5.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1999), 194.
David Savran, Taking It Like A Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 8.
Claudia Shear, Blown Sideways through Life (New York: Dial Press, 1995), 41.
J. Eric Oliver, Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 72–3.
Frank Rich, “Fat and 64 Jobs Later, Misfit Finally Finds a Niche Onstage,” New York Times, September 22, 1993. The review is favorable, but it is remarkable that Rich makes a point to inaccurately guess her age (she was, in fact, 31 at the time) highlighting his focus on her physical characteristics.
Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 65.
Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1995), 64–5.
Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1995), 34–5.
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© 2014 Jennifer-Scott Mobley
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Mobley, JS. (2014). Dangerous Curves. In: Female Bodies on the American Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428943_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428943_10
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