(Auto)Theorizing the maternal interval: Burlesque performance as creative research

Abstract

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.