Modern Drama: Defining the Field (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Modern Drama: Defining the Field Jodi Kanter Modern Drama: Defining the Field. Edited by Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003; pp. xiii + 212. $27.95 paper. With their collection of essays, Modern Drama: Defining the Field, editors Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins, and W. B. Worthen hope to open theatre studies to "questionings of period and generic boundaries; to questionings of scholarly and generic privilege based on class, race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; and to questionings of all kinds, especially those that haven't yet been thought of or understood" (xiii). The collection is the fruit of the three-day conference "Modern Drama" held in Toronto in 2000 under the auspices of the journal Modern Drama. The collected conference proceedings first appeared in volumes 43.4 and 44.1 of the journal. Although the present collection bumps up against significant limitations in both representation and elaboration, and although organization is wanting, as a whole Modern Drama succeeds in articulating a broad, even exciting vision for the scholarship of modern drama. The volume opens with Elin Diamond's distinguished essay, "Modern Drama/Modernity's Drama." Breathtaking in both scope and coherence, especially in its present condensed form, "Modernity's Drama" articulates a critical difference between modernity, which is deeply invested in historical time, and modernism, which is suspicious of singular historical narratives. Modernity's drama, Diamond argues, is a double optic, through which histories may, indeed must, be seen as multiple, irrational and, perhaps most radically, "unredeemed by the rational promise of progress or futurity" (11). Diamond argues that it is not drama per se but performance that mandates this double optic, since performance makes it impossible not to read the text on multiple historical planes. Diamond surveys the contributions of Aphra Behn, August Strindberg, Bertold Brecht, and Zora Neale Hurston to a drama whose exclusion from received canons of modernism she sees as an opportunity. Particularly interesting is her analysis of Behn's work which, Diamond argues, rejects modernity's historicizing mandate, even as modernity rejects her. The other essay in the collection that approaches Diamond's in breadth of vision is Shannon Jackson's "Why Modern Plays Are Not Culture: Disciplinary Blind Spots." Where Diamond's essay troubles the history of the field's central terms, Jackson's troubles the genealogy of the field itself. Most importantly, Jackson recalls and revalues modern drama's [End Page 534] relationship to literary studies, even as she affirms its newer relationship with cultural studies. Through a reading of Raymond Williams's oeuvre, Jackson demonstrates that "the transition from literary to cultural studies can be seen to take place through the vehicle of 'modern drama'" (41). More specifically, it is through modern drama's "embedded practicality" and "extra-literary aesthetics" that the transformation from literary to cultural studies takes place. Similarly, Jackson argues that modern drama is also a linchpin in the relationship between theatre studies and performance studies. In both cases, Jackson uncovers disciplinary blind spots and argues powerfully for a longer, more complicated disciplinary genealogy, one that affirms the value of both newer and older origins. The three essays in the center of the collection are perhaps the most coherent unit, each concerning itself with the postmodern in different, complementary ways. Loren Kruger identifies the emphasis on subjecthood as distinctly modern and, surprisingly, cites Hegel's aesthetic as the source of this emphasis. Surprisingly, again, she then reads several postmodern—or, as she calls them, postdramatic—performances as sites wherein subjecthood is explored. These performances come from a range of genres, including solo performance, documentary theatre, and puppet theatre. Interestingly, the documentary and puppet theatre performances both deal with the same subject, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Sue-Ellen Case's essay positions Brecht against his little-known predecessor, Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society. Through this unexpected tête-à-tête, Case demonstrates that Brecht's idea of the modern was largely outdated before it was articulated and that postmodern performance, as an embodiment privileging neither western nor male perspectives, can be traced back not only before Brecht but before the turn of the twentieth century. Finally...