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    Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show
    Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show
    Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show
    Ebook171 pages1 hour

    Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show

    By Young Jean Lee

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    About this ebook

    The world premiere was at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in spring 2014 in conjunction with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company.

    Earned a subsequent Off-Broadway production at The Public Theater in fall 2014, starring Tony Award nominee Austin Pendleton.

    Straight White Men is the most naturalistic of Lee’s works, which are known for their varying experimental theatre styles.

    May be of interest to younger and academic audiences interested in investigating social identity, gender and privilege.

    Topical play with heavy intellectual subtext: inquisitive but not moralizing; questions the role of privilege in both social and individual identity.

    Young Jean Lee is one of the foremost experimental theatre playwrights currently in the field

    Lee is the recipient of two Obie Awards: the 2007 Emerging Playwright Award and a 2011 special citation for her first musical work We’re Gonna Die, which premiered at Joe’s Pub with the Public Theater (Off-Broadway, New York) in 2011.

    Charles Isherwood of the New York Times has referred to Lee as “hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation.”

    Lee is also known for her provocative works The Shipment, Lear (her edgy adaptation of King Lear), and Untitled Feminist Show
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTheatre Communications Group
    Release dateMay 26, 2020
    ISBN9781559368322
    Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show

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      Book preview

      Straight White Men / Untitled Feminist Show - Young Jean Lee

      UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW

      STRAIGHT WHITE MEN

      OTHER BOOKS BY YOUNG JEAN LEE PUBLISHED BY TCG

      THE SHIPMENT AND LEAR

      SONGS OF THE DRAGONS FLYING TO HEAVEN AND OTHER PLAYS

      ALSO INCLUDES:

      Church

      Pullman, WA

      The Appeal

      Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

      Yaggoo

      WE’RE GONNA DIE

      UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW

      STRAIGHT WHITE MEN

      Young Jean Lee

      THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP

      NEW YORK

      2020

      Straight White Men/Untitled Feminist Show is copyright © 2020

      by Young Jean Lee

      Straight White Men/Untitled Feminist Show is published

      by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor,

      New York, NY 10018-4156

      All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty.

      All rights, including but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Olivier Sultan, Creative Artists Agency, 405 Lexington Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10174, (212) 277-9000.

      Peter Piper, by Joseph Ward Simmons and Darryl McDaniels, © 1986 Arista Records LLC. The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music, by Friedrich Nietzsche (1872), Shaun Whiteside, translator, Penguin Classics, London, 1993. The author thanks the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization for its kind cooperation with the author’s parody of the song Oklahoma as used in Straight White Men.

      The publication of Straight White Men/Untitled Feminist Show by Young Jean Lee, through TCG’s Book Program, is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

      Special thanks to Paula Marie Black for her generous support of this publication.

      TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.

      Library of Congress Control Numbers:

      2018041310 (print) / 2018048935 (ebook)

      ISBN 978-1-55936-503-1 (print) / ISBN 978-1-55936-832-2 (ebook)

      A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

      Book design and composition by Lisa Govan

      Cover design by Mark Melnick

      First Edition, May 2020

      FOR

      LEE SUNDAY EVANS,

      MORGAN GOULD,

      EMILYN KOWALESKI,

      AND

      LEAH NANAKO WINKLER

      CONTENTS

      UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW

      STRAIGHT WHITE MEN

      UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW

      FOR CALEB HAMMONS

      PRODUCTION HISTORY

      Untitled Feminist Show premiered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis on January 5, 2012. It was performed by:

      Conceived and directed by Young Jean Lee in collaboration with Faye Driscoll, Morgan Gould, and the original performers. Associate director, Morgan Gould. Produced by Aaron Rosenblum. Dramaturgy by Mike Farry. Set design by David Evans Morris. Sound design by Chris Giarmo and Jamie McElhinney. Lighting design by Raquel Davis. Video design by Leah Gelpe. Associate video design by Bart Cortright. Associate lighting design by Ryan Seelig. Production supervisor, Sunny Stapleton.

      Special thanks to Caleb Hammons and Bianca Leigh, who were part of the show’s initial development, and to Malinda Ray Allen, Desiree Burch, Cynthia Hopkins, Madison Krekel, Erin Markey, and Jen Rosenblit, who performed in tours of the show.

      Additional thanks to Jennifer Devere Brody, Joshua Bastian Cole, Melanie LaBarge, Frances Lee, Amani Starnes, and Sista Zai Zanda, my intersectional feminist/gender theory consultants for the published script; as well as to Emilyn Kowaleski, who took a first pass at documenting the movement; and to Andrew Hoepfner, who wrote most of the descriptions of the original production’s sound. Thanks also to the countless other people who collaborated on the text for this script.

      Untitled Feminist Show was originally commissioned by the Walker Art Center, and is a co-production of the Walker Art Center, steirischer herbst, Kunstenfestivaldesartes, the Spalding Gray Award (PS122 New York, Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, On the Boards Seattle), and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company (Young Jean Lee, Artistic Director; Aaron Rosenblum, Producing Director).

      The show was remounted at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, with the same cast and production team. It opened on January 15, 2012.

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      This show was created by a group of American feminists, and whenever the word feminist appears, it refers to feminism as seen through our particular cultural lenses. Moreover, Untitled Feminist Show isn’t a show about feminism. It doesn’t attempt to explain feminism or say anything new about it. Rather, as the title indicates, this is a feminist show.

      I made this show in collaboration with choreographer Faye Driscoll, associate director Morgan Gould, and performers Becca Blackwell, Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle, Regina [sic], Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), and World Famous *BOB*. My collaborators and I focused on one aspect of feminism: the exploration and creation of gender-fluid spaces where people are free to express themselves without regard for the rules of the male/female gender binary. We wanted to create a fantasy world in which people—regardless of what gender they were assigned at birth—could embody a range of identities without being shamed or discriminated against.

      To many of the show’s creators, the idea of a gender-fluid world seemed appealing, because we felt oppressed by the gender labels assigned to us. However, we realize this isn’t the case for everyone, and the show doesn’t mean to suggest that everyone should identify as gender fluid. Rather, the show is a demonstration of the potential for gender fluidity within the human form.

      This show was created out of the experiences of people who had, at some point in our lives, been perceived as women or girls, whether we chose this or not. Therefore, the roles were designed for people like us to perform. However, the absence of parts for cisgender (cis) men—that is, men whose gender corresponds to their birth sex—isn’t meant to suggest that we believe cis men should be excluded from the creation of a gender-fluid world.

      The performers should be completely nude throughout the entirety of the show, since any trace of clothing or decoration inevitably marks them as feminine or masculine to the audience. Hairstyling and makeup (including foundation and nail polish) shouldn’t be used, for the same reason, and also to empower the performers to be fabulous as they are. Prosthetics are fine as long as the performer uses them in daily life and/or considers them a part of their body.

      Untitled Feminist Show isn’t meant to be an intellectual experience. It uses the language of movement to generate emotion in the audience. Therefore, with the exception of the recorded pre-show announcement and the song in Welsh, there should ideally be no words or lyrics (live or recorded) in the show, whether spoken, projected, played, or sung. With that said, in our production we did include a few background words and phrases in some of our music tracks, but they were either incomprehensible or relatively meaningless.

      Because the performers’ bodies should do as much of the communicating as possible, frilly pink parasols are the only props. Note: The color pink has been critiqued as a symbol of exclusionary white feminism. I think this is unfortunate, as this view can easily align with the long history of misogyny already attached to the color (wearing pink makes you weak like a girl or gay). This show treats pink parasols as symbols of historically despised femininity, rather than symbols of feminism or of women as a whole. Feel free to replace them with whatever symbol of femininity you’d like.

      This show doesn’t subscribe to the view that performance art should be aggressive toward and destructive of all that came before it. It doesn’t scorn conventionally pleasing choreography, prettiness, or childishness. It wasn’t made to provide a sense of boundary-pushing novelty for highly educated sophisticates.

      Rather, the purpose of Untitled Feminist Show is to create joy. It is meant to be an act of generosity and love.

      The scene headings and statements of purpose are strictly for the production team and performers. They are not meant to be printed in the program, heavily signaled via the choreography, or otherwise

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