Representing the ‘perhaps(h)er’: Cross‐cultural approaches to the politics of identity in a production ofthe singular life of Albert Nobbs

Abstract

A search for theatrical languages which represent the dynamics of increasingly destabilised cultural, national and gender identities through practices derived from Oriental theatre informed the production of Simone Benmussa's The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs at Reading University in December 1990. While wishing to retain Benmussa's interrogation of authorial identity and the structures which maintain patriarchy, the production aimed to extend the critique of cultural dislocation, by adopting Oriental theatre strategies similar to those used by Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine. Rather than reproducing Asian theatre conventions, the metaphorising strategy of replacing one signifier with another was employed to widen the field of signification, thereby exploring the imposition of cultural and gender identities. While Brook and Mnouchkine have used these forms to defamiliarise, their spectacular productions do not always expose difference. The Reading production aimed to politicise rather than exoticise the...