Voice and Narration in Postmodern Drama

Author(s): Brian Richardson

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 32, No. 3, Voice and Human Experience (Summer, 2001), pp.
681-694
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057683
Accessed: 09-07-2015 20:41 UTC

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Voice

and Narration

in Postmodern

Drama

Brian Richardson

a recent

discussion
of narrative voice in this journal, Richard
to (silent) written
Aczel observed:
"As an entity attributed
texts, the
of ontology
of voice
raises questions
and
concept
inevitably
.... The
of
'who
in
narrative
discourse
metaphoricity
question
speaks?'
texts can really be said to 'speak'
invites the further question of whether
on by
at all."1 Such a formulation,
though itmay well pass unremarked

In

theorists
of narration,
nevertheless
betrays a bias toward the
text that leaves unexamined
written
all performed
narratives
that are
indeed literally voiced: oral tales and epics as well as spoken narrations
in drama, film, video, and performance
art. At one level, the answer to
texts
Aczel's
conundrum
is deceptively
in written
simple: narrators
same
in
the
narrators
texts.
A
that
in
oral
way
basically
"speak"
speak
an
a
is
who
writes
format
earlier
established
person
epic
reproducing
by
an author like Milton,
bards who only declaimed
their narratives?and
most

who dictated
is presumably
his epics to his daughters,
situated some
in between
where
these two positions. When
he said: "all mist from
thence / Purge and disperse,
that Imay see and tell / Of things invisible
to mortal
was
meant
but the telling was
sight," seeing
metaphorically,
was performed
act
literal?and
the
of
its
very
by
being uttered.2
But if we have solved one problem
text may "speak" in a
written
(a
manner
an
to
text is spoken), we
in
that
which
oral
entirely analogous
have only begun to scratch the surface of the larger issue: voice may be
a variety of ways
severed from what it speaks?and
indeed from itself?in
that have been insufficiently
of
The
Milton
suggests
explored.
example
some of the complexities
and contradictions
inherent
in the act of
to the voice once it is read silently
narration. What happens
performed
rather than heard? Whose
voice is speaking
the divine
(through) Milton:
or
he
is
to
the
formula
he
claims,
inspiration
generic
obligated
repeat?
What is the status of the voice in a public reading, either by the author or
as it does in
the text speaks autobiographically,
by another reader? When
this passage, does the voice of the narrator merge with that of the author,
as
to the
theory postulates?3
autobiographical
Finally, what happens
distinction
between oral and written epics when illiterate bards pause so
their words will be accurately
and Paradise Lost, that most
transcribed,
and delivered orally?
seemingly "written" of all epics, is in fact composed
New Literary History, 2001, 32: 681-694

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682

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

in
As we will see, there are numerous
oddities and fissures in narration
more
recent
in
its
this
drama, especially
permutations.
Unfortunately,
ne
is little known and largely undertheorized.
practice
Narratology's
of
in
the
is
voice
glect
narrating
performance
actually quite surprising,
of important work on narration
in film by
given the wide dissemination
numerous

scholars.

By

drama

the

contrast,

is still

critical

on

literature

in

narration

a few

and

relatively
slight
beyond
virtually unknown
theorists of drama.4 And even among such theorists it is not recognized
as fully as it deserves
to be: as recently as 1980, Keir Elam could write
that drama is without narratorial mediation.5
In what follows, Iwill provide a brief survey of three basic strategies of

and go on to note
the distinctively
that some of these strategies have recently
to the role of literal voice (s) in
paying particular attention
I will not be dealing with brief narratives
spoken by one
of an offstage death in Greek
another, as in the recounting
or constitute
rather ontologically
larger acts that engender

narration

in drama

transformations

postmodern
undergone,
these works.
to
character

tragedy, but
the repre
sented action. The works discussed will include narratives articulated
by
in the world
creates
characters who are present
that their discourse
as well as narratives
that are
(homodiegetic),
produced
by agents
to the storyworld
external
in
is so
Narration
drama
(heterodiegetic).

that I will identify several examples

yet so little appreciated
widespread
to suggest the range and extent of this practice.
I will then look at the
in two particularly
of voice and narration
unusual deployment
compel
VT Throbbing. Once
ling works, Beckett's Not I and Paula Vogel's Hot
again, by voice I mean
only literal, human voices on or off the stage,
as
or produce
inflect
the narration of the work. Finally,
particularly
they
I will

speculate

contemporary

on
narrative

the

of

significance
theory

and

Memory

the

these

semiotics

staged
of

narrations

for

drama.

Plays

We might
the most
of
familiar presentation
begin with perhaps
on stage, the type of drama often referred to as the memory
narration
a
in which
the
enacted
narrative
play. It is
homodiegetic
partially
narrator
is also a participant
in the events he or she recounts
and
an
enacts.6 In Tennessee
Williams's
The Glass Menagerie,
for example,
actor comes on stage, identifies himself as "the narrator of the play, and
also a character
in it," sets the scene ("I turn back time"), and describes
and the concerns
the other characters
of the play.7 He
that
indicates
what is to follow is a memory
and
observes
that
it
is
play
consequently
not realistic. Here
ceases and the mimetic
the diegetic
part
portion

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VOICE

AND

NARRATION

IN POSTMODERN

DRAMA

683

begins, as what was uttered by a single, governing voice becomes enacted

resumes
by several speaking characters. Later in the play, the protagonist
his functions as narrator to introduce
the third and sixth scenes, and to
on the action in the fifth scene. At the end of the perform
comment
the gist of his subsequent
travels and brings the story
ance, he narrates
directions
also encourage
up to the time of its telling. The
stage
to
variation
in this figure's
its
enhance
effect:
"The
performance
narrator
is an undisguised
of the play. He takes whatever
convention
to his purposes"
license with dramatic convention
is convenient
(22).
The alternation
between narration and enacted events is quite compa
rable in may ways to a homodiegetic
narrator's shift between presenting
scenes as they unfolded
in his or her
life and the retrospective
that
takes
the
time
of the writing, as found in
commentary
place during
to take a standard example. The
the first person fictions of Dickens,
drama further marks
in tone and temporality by the
such differences
narrator moving
in and out of character, and addressing
the audience
rather

than

the

actors.

the twentieth
Memory
plays have regularly
appeared
throughout
In
of
of
variations
this
century.
type
postmodern
play, many hitherto
are challenged
or contested. Most of the
standard dramatic conventions
action of Tom Stoppard's
Travesties takes place within
the memory
of
a
in
historical
who
worked
the British Consulate
in
Henry Carr,
figure
in 1918, he met James Joyce. The play is set several
Z?rich where,
decades
later; Carr is an old man thinking about writing a record of his
encounters
with the great figures he ran into during World War I. His
is clearly in decline,
but it is no ordinary bad memory.
His
memory
are
(or rather, antimemories)
grotesque deformations
misrememberings
of the events

in their own right;

they purport to recall and are humorous
of a bad joke, many of
thus, since Carr always felt Joyce was something
in the form of limericks. His
Joyce's speeches are trivial and presented
is also subject to "time slips" so that, in the words of the stage
mind
"the story (like a toy train perhaps)
directions,
occasionally
jumps the
rails and has to be restarted at the point where
it goes wild."8
to experimental
such scenes owe more
Obviously,
styles of plot
construction
than to the representation
of any actual patterns
of
in the elderly. At other times Carr's reminiscences
are impossi
memory
works that Carr never read,
bly accurate, as Joyce is recalled composing
or Lenin
is speaking
in Russian?a
language Carr cannot understand.
Finally, all the events of Carr's past merge with the plot of The Importance
of Bang Earnest which Carr acted in at Joyce's request in Z?rich. This is
not then a memory
as an ingenious
intertextual
play so much
collage
as
that travesties
the memory
the
to
consciousness
play,
purported
contain
the thoughts
is revealed at every scene to be instead a
playful

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684

NEW

fabrication.

is a clear specimen

Carr

"fraudulent

of what

averred

whose

narrator,"

LITERARY

I have elsewhere
stance

narrative

HISTORY

termed
so

is

the

clearly

to be believed.9
that it is not intended
preposterous
David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is primarily a memory
play, but it is
one that also allows the protagonist,
Ren? Gallimard,
the opportunity
of
to the audience,
on
direct address
metatheatrical
the
commentary
scenes of his earlier
of occasional
life, and the staged enactment
fantasies.

More

the play also dramatizes

the workings of his
audaciously,
as
as
to
well
the
efforts
of
his
consciousness
subconscious,
incomplete
this
Gallimard
has
material.
When
whom
suppress
embarrassing
Song,
to be a woman,
to disrobe
believed
and reveal his male
prepares
terms:
in
Gallimard
the
protests
genitalia,
following
want

to see!

No!

Song:

Then

Gallimard:

You're only inmy mind! All this is inmy mind!

To

Stop!
look

stop!
what?

away.

Song:

To

Gallimard:

No! Stop! Iwant you?!

Song:
Gallimard:

You

The

To

To

want

That's

strip?

just what

I order you!

I'm?

me?

stop!10

of Song thus voices the revealing

that
slips of the tongue
to
to
that
the
be added
ego seeks
repress. It hardly needs

figure
Gallimand's

is no

mind

conscious

I don't

Gallimard:

match

for

such

an

assiduous

one

subconscious,

that has been

the
form and a voice
that can utter
given bodily
same
desires. At the
time, the realistic pres
protagonist's
unspeakable
ence of another, antagonistic
drama
memory
figure within Gallimard's
seem
it would
than mere psychic repression;
suggests something more
that

another

autodiegesis

mind

has

the

enacted

of

entered

the

drama

and

the

contaminated

narration.

on this genre
the ultimate
variation
is produced
by Paula
Perhaps
in The Baltimore Waltz, a very curious memory
Vogel
play that reenacts
scenes of what appears
to be the protagonist's
strange trip to Europe
with

her

brother,

seem

that

Carl?scenes

to owe

more

to movies

about

than any actual or recognizable

a third person
there. Explanatory
narration,
experience
including
account of the thoughts of the protagonist,
is spoken by an actor with a
accent
thick, Peter Sellers French
("It was a simple bistro affair by

Europe

French

and other

standards.

popular

. . .He

simulacra

barely

touched

his

meal.

...

As

their

meal

progressed,
thought of the lunches she had packed back home") ,n
are invented.
As it turns out, the trip was never taken, and the memories
The play is instead a fabricated narrative,
the sister's imagining of what
Anna

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VOICE

AND

NARRATION

her memories
brother

died

IN POSTMODERN

might have been

of AIDS.

had

Generative

685

DRAMA

they traveled

together

before

her

Narrators

In his essay, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre

for Instruction?" Bertolt
in
the
of
the
distinctive
features of the
Brecht,
outlining
development
use
theater
he
its
stressed
of
narration:
"The
created,
epic
stage began to
tell a story. The narrator was no
the fourth
with
along
longer missing,
wall."12 Not only did Brecht employ narrators
in many of his plays, he
texts before
also displayed written
each scene that frequently
had a
narrative function. And in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a bard is actually
a fictional
brought on stage to narrate a story. In doing so, he generates
a
manner
world (hence my name for this practice)
in
similar to that of
an omniscient
narrator. Brecht's
narrates
in the
storyteller
diegetically,
to the stage, he directs actors to
third person, until, pointing
numerically
enact the narrative he gives voice to. This oscillation
between
the two
modes
then continues
the play. In contrast
representational
throughout
to the memory
in
narrative
play, this type of work is a heterodiegetic
the narrator
which
resides
in a distinct
level
from
that
ontological
narrators
Other
include
the
by the characters.
occupied
generative
ofWilder's
Our Town, and, more radically, the storytelling
Stage Manager
characters of Milan Kundera's Jacques and His Master. One of the most
to extend this technique
dramatists
is Samuel
contemporary
compelling
in
his
later
narrators
whose
dramatic
and
Beckett,
work,
especially
create
as
name
the
world
around
them
it
(for
monologists
they
example,
A Piece ofMonologue).
observes
that there is a basic difference
between
narration
in
fiction
In
and
the
film.
narrator
"the
former,
heterodiegetic
of the novel tells the whole story,
everything we read. Even as
mediating
we
...
we assume
of
the
plough
long passages
through
dialogue,
Seymour

continuing

Chatman

presence

of

the

narrator."

In film,

however,

"the

narrator's

is only salient at the moment

he or she speaks. Otherwise,
the
presence
combined
force of the diegetic
visual and sound
images dominate,
that things are happening
giving the impression
right there before us."13
a position closer to fiction than film?
in a theater occupies
Narration
on
narrator
if
the
is
the events, as he is
especially
stage engendering
Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. It is true in the other cases as well, since
we never entirely feel that
"things are happening
right there," because
we know what
is "there" is a stage, not a battlefield
in France. A
disembodied
voice or voice-over
a
creates
dra
invariably
pronounced
matic effect: hearing words being uttered in an auditorium
defamiliarizes

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686

NEW

the more

usual

Likewise,
deep
nonillusionistic

LITERARY

HISTORY

conventions
of representation.
(and usually mimetic)
of stylization
traditions
and so on),
(verse drama,
theater
condi
asides), and the material
(for example,

tions

of the playing space (lighting effects, coughing)

all work against
the illusion of representation;
in the theater there is considerably more
to suspend
than in a cinema.
disbelief
Tom Stoppard, however, reveals how thoroughly
voice-over
in a video
can be destabilized.
medium
His 1984 television play, Squaring the Circle,
is a kind of postmodern
about the events surrounding
the
documentary
in
It
union
Poland
1980
and
1981.
the
Solidarity
during
pushes
new
narrator
to
extremes
to
the
generative
by applying
technique
events that were at the time of its filming
historical
unknowable.
largely
It has a narrator, whose
role at first seems to be merely
that of the
conventional

pseudo-objective

voice-over.

Soon,

however,

the

voice

the enacted events. After introducing

Brezhnev
and Gierek
a
on
a
on
at
resort
narrator
the
Black
beach
the
Sea,
talking together
on
to
state
In
"This
isn't
of
course?."
close
them,
that,
goes
up we then
see the (suddenly)
narrator who,
bodied
into the
looking
directly
this
the
"and
isn't
Black Sea. Everything
is
camera, continues
speaking,
true except the words and the pictures.
If there was a beach, Brezhnev
and Gierek probably
omniscient
didn't
talk on it."14 The deceptively
to
is here demystified
be a single,
and revealed
voice
documentary
contradicts

and limited knowledge.15

situated
speaker with his own positionality
What
is ultimately
here is nothing
contested
less than any claim to the
of heterodiegetic
discourse
(such as omniscience),
epistemic
privileges
at least in genres like the documentary
to be nonfictional.
that purport

Offstage
Unique
the stage,

Narrative

Voices

to performance
is the disembodied
narrative voice that sets
on events, and propels
comments
the action.16 The first
Iwill set forth are heterodiegetic
ones, though homodiegetic

examples
cases also exist; in this area, theatrical options
those of the
resemble
and Seymour Chatman
have similarly noted
cinema, as Sarah Kozloff
in film.17 The Voice
in Cocteau's
The Infernal
voice-over
concerning
Machine
is a representative
and inter
ironic,
omniscient,
example:
us
at
act
it
the
of
the
second
that it will
informs
ventionary,
beginning
at the same
wind back the clock and represent
other events unfolding
time as those that have just been displayed.
In The Singular Life of Albert
starts with an offstage
of the
Nobbs, Simone Benmussa
representation
voice of George Moore,
the author of the story the play is adapted from.

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VOICE

AND

IN POSTMODERN

NARRATION

687

DRAMA

to tell;
the story he has begun
appear and dramatize
asides.
narrative
he
will
also
various
the
present
throughout
production,
of
in Portrait ofDora, further extends the subjectification
H?l?ne Cixous,
to as "The Voice of the Play"
the narrative voice, as an entity referred
to slippages of identity in the drama and the impossibil
draws attention
as opposed
to what was
of
what actually happened,
ity
determining

Actors

then

desired,

still more

or misremembered.18

transferred,

projected,

in Marguerite
Duras's
four offstage
voices which
India Song.19 This work contains
usually
on stage. At
on or inquire about the events being enacted
comment
other times, however,
their comments
take the place of or echo the
A

characters'

radical

dialogue,

transformation

or

seem

to

appears

the

engender

next

sequence

of

actions.

It is a shifting, utterly unstable

relation, that recreates and relativizes the
new
in
As
Elin
has observed,
voice
Diamond
ways.
"though the
offstage
seems
to
enactment
the
of
the
from
voices, the
memory
emerge
stage
rather they
voices are incapable of assuming a stable narrating position;
react fearfully, helplessly,
anxiously, erotically, both to what they witness
and what they partially remember."20
is so complete
This narrative fascination
that the voices' interactions
a second, offstage drama that is both parallel
to and depen
constitute
dent on the play enacted on the stage, as the voices speak for the actual
times seem to usurp
the fixity of critical

audience
and at other
author. They dislodge
mimetic

assumptions,

as

memory

and

the prerogatives
of
categories
grounded
narration

invention,

and

the
in

descrip

tion, seeing and speaking glide into one another. As Andrew Gibson
notes in this issue, Sarah Kozloff has suggested
that voice-over narration
in film humanizes
and tames an otherwise
narrative
"odd, impersonal
I
in
that
the
described
is
the
suggest
agency" (IS 128).
plays just
opposite
the case, as offstage voices work to decenter
and
defamiliarize
identity
conventional

of

practices

dramatic

representation.21

Pinter's Family Voices transforms the use of voices in drama in still other
innovative ways, and suggests yet another
strategy. The play consists of
three

voices?those

of

a mother,

father,

and

son?that

seem

to

be

letters they have sent each other; as the play progresses,

it
reading
never
becomes
that
letters
the
mother's
have
been
the
read;
apparent
son's never sent (and probably never written); while
the third set are
voiced by the father, who is dead and is literally speaking from beyond
the grave. The work was first broadcast
as radio play?a
genre that is
constituted
but
human
sound
and
voices,
effects,
silence; a
by nothing
was
few weeks
work
the
in
in
later,
presented
"platform performance"
which
the physical proximity
of the actors speaking
the texts contra
aloud

dicted

the unbridgeable

ontological

chasms

between

the characters.22

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688

LITERARY

NEW

account

Any

in Not /and Hot V

and Narration

Voice

of unusual

and

voices

some mention

Throbbing
on

narrators

anomalous

HISTORY

must

stage

of
work,
Last
of
limits
narration
and
the
interrogates
subjectivity. Krapp's
on
man
to and commenting
listening
Tape consists primarily of an old
in
is
he
has
made
earlier.
It
also
narratives
many years
part a
taped
on voice, since the actor's words on tape and his speech in
meditation
the theater are utterly disparate,
both stylistically and aurally. In the
directed
the young Krapp
1977 performance
by Beckett,
by John Cluchy
is suave, sleek, metallic,
is
and self-satisfied, while his older incarnation
the two incompatible
articula
harsh, rasping, and at times vaudevillian;
the disjunction
of "the" self
tions of the same voice, that is, underscore
include

Beckett's

of Samuel

theatrical

much

which

that

utters

them.

Beckett's
later short play, Not I, as its title suggests, also interrogates
stance. The
self and identity as well as any traditional,
fixed narrative
work consists primarily of a torrent of words that are uttered by a single
an arrangement
to the
that draws full attention
illuminated
mouth,
voice. The
function
and nature of this strange, nearly disembodied
drama

can

even

sets

out

mouth

identified

be
a

not

refers

to

but

is illusory;
to

rather

the

the

someone

of

existence

this attribution

another,

as

narration,

"pseudo-third-person"
of
the miserable

account

as "she." But

merely

narrative

called

sad

the jumbled
herself.

speaker

so wretched
that
life story is however
Mouth's
truncated and repetitive
to
to acknowledge
the speaker
refuses
connection
it,
any
despite
voice that only she can hear. This
reiterated
by another
promptings
drama of the work,
adds to the epistemological
strange communication
as the audience,
to
the
and
like Mouth,
struggles
identify
keep distinct
selection
should
various subjectivities
that are invoked, as the following
suggest:
back

in the

field

but

the

. . .
morning
... so on

larks

nothing
the odd

word

mouth

. . . like maddened

she?

We

. . .

find,
memorial

. . .make

something

some

she

..

had

that is, a m?lange

reconstruction,

sense

. . . and
to?.

. . sink

. . .
April.

sun

grabbing
of it.
can't
. .what?

at the
. .whole
stop

face

straw...

like

gone
it.

body
no
stopping
. . no!
. . she!
. .who?
...

. . .

in the grass
to hear
straining

down

. . .

..
the

just

. .

something
. ,23

and narration,
invention
of description
and the contradiction
self-correction

and

and
of

voice.
(internal? internalized?)
of subjectivities,
there is also the physical
To add to this rich confusion
on stage as well.
dressed
in
silent
of
black,
another,
presence
figure,
riddle of the
Even after we solve what might
be called the modernist
another

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AND

VOICE

NARRATION

IN POSTMODERN

689

DRAMA

that is, that the "other" described

in the third person
is actually a
of the self that speaks,
the postmodern
version
enigma
displaced
and to whom
is she
remains: just who or what is Mouth,
(or what)
she may be an
suggest themselves:
speaking? Numerous
possibilities
a figure in hell, an
image of a madwoman,
allegory of the dispossessed,
or a parody of authorial
the imagined
creation; she may be addressing
voice of another, another version of herself, or the metadramatic
image
of a stage prompter. But more than anything else, the very physicality of
this staging of a contaminated
consciousness?the
disembodied
mouth

work,

the unexplained
auditor?ensures
that no critical gesture will be
to unify these defiantly
Richard Aczel
is
inorganic
fragments.
a
in
that
"narrative
like
other
is
voice,
voice,
any
entirely right
affirming
a
of
voices"
(HV
fundamentally
composite entity:
specific
configuration
a literal voice can be.
483). Beckett's work shows just how composite
We may move on to an account of the play of voice and consciousness
in Paula Vogel's Hot
'n' Throbbing, one of the most
recent, innovative,
and

able

and powerful

of several of the strands of narration

and
developments
are
been
traced
two
that
have
above.
There
subjectivity
primary figures
in the play, a woman who is trying to scrape together a living by writing
erotic film scripts for a feminist film company, and her former husband,
a
abusive man who, drunk, breaks down her door as she is
physically
at

working

her

computer.

There

are

two

also

narrative

voices:

one,

is female, a kind of muse,

the "Voice-Over,"
the woman's
designated
inner voice and source of the narrative material
that the woman
types; it
a voice of temptation,
is also, at other moments,
of her feminist
of horror films. The other, called
and of the language
conscience,
a
is
male
discourse
that uses a number
of styles and
"Voice,"
protean
in male
in the language of
clich?s, proffers diagnoses
out
and
reads
from figures
like
passages
early sexology,
phallocratie
D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Nabokov's Humbert
Its
Humbert.24
voices form a collective
different
social discourse
of male domination
accents,

and

speaks

control.

As if this were not experimental

the medium
enough, Vogel pushes
on the stage: the
still further: both voices are literally embodied
playing
space is dual, at once an ordinary
living room and at other times a
in the former
hall, and the voices
fantasy erotic dance
space are
physically
Voice-Over

is, portrayed

present?that
is also

sex

worker,

located

by actors?in
in

glass

the
booth

latter. Here,
where

dances

she

as the
the play. The Voice
is also corporeally
during
present
of an erotic dance hall, acting "like a live DJ, spinning
owner/bouncer
the score of the piece," and often breathing
into his micro
heavily
(BW2S2). At times, he also sounds like the abusive husband. No
phone
wonder
the protagonist
asks in an aside after a passage of fallacious,

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690

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

is uttered
"Where is that
turn-of-the-century
sexology
by the Voice,
from?"
(J5W249).
coming
As will be readily imagined,
the drama is as much about the struggle
as it is about the individuals who
two competing
between
discourses
to
them.
This
discursive
clash occurs in seemingly minor
happen
speak
areas as well as in those of mortal
As the woman, Charlene,
significance.
sits at her computer and tries to come up with synonyms for "throbbing,"
in turn sug
Voice-Over
proffers
"pulsating" and "heaving," while Voice
more
the
violent
and
(BW 243-44). The play
gests
"battering"
"beating"
about gender and
discourses
or
woman are
adapted by the
on
to
other
into
her
and
will
animate
text,
go
incorporated
presumably
a creative,
individuals who will view her film once it is finished. Here,
as an alternative
to the more
nonviolent
is offered
recursivity
deeply
at
verbal
habits
and
of
the
culture
behaviors
ingrained
large. This kind of
is further
be called materialist
metatheater,
reflexivity, which might
also documents
the circulation
of public
as
and
ideas
overheard
sexuality,
speeches

in

articulated

Discussing

other

statements

the difference

between

about

feminist

the

power

of

erotica

and

the protagonist
the difference
pornography,
explains
tive progression:
"desire in female spectators
is aroused

representation.

traditional male
in terms of narra

in a
by cinema
much different way. Narrativity?that
is, plot?is
(BW261).
emphasized"
are
acts of discursive
At the end of the play, individual
resistance
now
of institutional
control. Voice,
overwhelmed
by male
agencies
that the script be inverted so
taking the role of a film producer, demands
that the woman
in it is bound and helpless. On the other set, the abusive
man
to batter and
gains physical control of the situation, and proceeds
lip-sync
finally kill his former wife. In this final scene, the two characters
that
violence
the almost predictable
domestic
words of contemporary
are provided
as the man
acts out the
by The Voice and Voice-Over,
horrid social script he knows so well.

Implications
are two of the most widespread
and best
our
seem
to
in
time:
both
be
now,
every
appreciated
are
fused
where.
It is only appropriate
that the site in which
they
of
attention
it
the
deserves.
One
is
given
literary theory
together
oddity
that needs to be rethought
is the belief that narrators and narration do
not exist
fiction
in drama,
in narrative
but are found
exclusively
Narrative

and performance
cultural forms

in one form or another

stretches back to Plato
belief which
proper?a
If this were the case, what are we to call the man who walks
and Aristotle.
on stage in The Glass Menagerie and identifies himself as the narrator, or

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VOICE

AND

NARRATION

IN POSTMODERN

691

DRAMA

is enacted
in The Caucasian Chalk Circle,
in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs? If one
exists in the cinema?a
that seems
grants that narration
proposition
to deny?then
itmakes no sense to refuse the same status to
impossible
in
drama, some of which, as in the case of the
techniques
comparable
or techniques
from Godard,
themselves
have been
voice-over
derived

the storyteller whose narration

or the voice of George Moore

drawn

from

the

cinema.

has long been a basic feature of the twentieth-century

Narration
stage,
to be more
and one
that ought
and extensively
fully appreciated
a valuable
in particular
theorized.
Narrative
has neglected
theory
resource
in the various performed
narrations
and stagings of mental
in the theater. The play with voice and narration
is even more
in
which
drama,
prominent
postmodern
regularly fragments and recom
accounts
resist interrogating;
of
bines
the subjectivities
it cannot
events

would do well to look more

into the realm
thoroughly
postmodernism
to be discov
of the theater, where numerous wonderful
wait
specimens
ered and named. Monika Fludernik's
article in this issue, which enjoins
us to resist equating each narrative agency with a hypostatized
narrator
an
to
useful
situate
the
way
figure, provides
especially
theoretically
narrators

in postmodern

drama who

exceed

the limits of an individual

consciousness.

to see a thoughtful,
One wishes
sustained
between
the
comparison
narrator of a standard homodiegetic
novel or oral tale and the narrator
of a memory
play. In each case, a fictional figure narrates his or her life,
on
to
comments
mimetic
discur
goes
provide unmediated,
dialogue,
on
returns
and
the action,
for additional narrative and dialogue.
It
sively
out that all three works can either be read
should be further pointed
alone or publicly performed
the tale told to
(the novel read aloud,
on stage). It is not clear to me that any
listeners, the drama performed
the three sets will outweigh
the shared features of
to be recognized
the very least, it needs
that drama, like
contains a complex mix of diegetic
and mimetic
modes.
as Manfred Jahn has
in
his
in
Furthermore,
paper
suggested
stimulating
to consider
this volume, we need
a
the implications
of postulating
narrator as the principle
of organization
and selection
in every play, as
we do for every novel and
or not
to Bordwell)
film, whether
(according
the narrator
is otherwise
visible. Ultimately,
the approach
I employ
in
these pages calls for a thorough
reexamination
of the mimetic/diegetic
the boundary
between
the two is much more porous and
dichotomy:
distinction

between

each pair. At
fiction, often

unstable
than is usually imagined.
In addition, many conceptualizations
basic to narrative theory can be
to approximate
enhanced
in performance.
by reference
equivalents
such as those concerning
the status and gender of otherwise
Questions

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692

NEW

unmarked
speaks

LITERARY

HISTORY

are clarified
the voice that
when
(or intensified)
can be nicely
is male or female.
Issues of focalization
when we are presented with a full staging of the protagonist's

narrators

the lines

complicated
consciousness?or

told,

as we

are

in India

Song,

that

the

voices

now

"see"

take on
of Bakhtinian
stage. A number
concepts
to
such as
their
theatrical
reference
incarnations,
greater immediacy by
or
or
the
interior
when
conflicting
disparate
polyphony
polemical
speech,
are
actors. Even
voices within a single consciousness
spoken by different
on the
the narratee becomes more
complex when he or she is present
more
or
to
studies of
One hopes for
in the audience.
stage,
gestured
in the corpus of authors who, like Beckett or Duras, experi
narration
the action

on

the

ment

studies that
with voice in fiction and drama. Likewise, comparative
traverse the disciplinary
boundaries
between drama and film are clearly
in order.

theatrical aspects of
this point, I wish to emphasize
the distinctively
reenactments
narration
that
exist
in
stage
Stoppard's
only
performance:
Beckett's
of narrative
voices;
revisions; Duras' multiple,
incomplete
memo
's
fabricated
Paula
and
disembodied
Mouth;
Vogel
contradictory,
in the physical
ries. The primacy
of the stage is particularly
evident
as what appears to be an inner voice is
of the Voice-Over,
embodiment
At

the character
given distinct bodily form. Similarly, the distance between
or extended
to be narrowed
and "her" inner voice can be perceived
re
on
actor
Voice-Over
the
whether
physically
depending
playing
D.C.
sembles the protagonist
or, as in the case of a recent Washington,
of another ethnicity.25 Together,
she is played by a woman
production,
of
voices and their representation
these are significant
developments
as such.
that only exist in performance
and deserve to be acknowledged
one
of
still
finds
In much dramatic
the
semiotics
and
theater,
theory
all too little recognition
of this kind of drama. Keir Elam, as already
as a theoretical
in
noted, does not even imagine narration
possibility
follow the example of Manfred
Pfister, who acknowledges
in the plays of
the existence
of what he terms "epic communication"
delimit and contain
Brecht and some others, but goes on to theoretically
as a deviation
from the
"is always interpreted
the practice: epic narration
a
statement
tends
Such
of dramatic presentation"
normal model
(TA 4).
drama. Others

to beg

and
the question
it should demonstrate,
to
most
the
of
the
drama
interesting
applied
where

the

"deviation"

has

become

unusually

is certainly false when

last seventy-five
years,

"normal."

to providing
extensions
The pieces I have discussed above, in addition
and reinventions
of the figure of the narrator, also share in modern
as well
of conventional
boundaries
literature's continued
transgressions
as its general dissolution
individual conscious
of the notion of a unified
ness. They also display a distinctively
take on the intersub
postmodern

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VOICE AND NARRATION IN POSTMODERN DRAMA 693

are
of the self?the
way individuals
jectivity and even intertextuality
even
more
that
constructed
the
surround
discourses
them.
Perhaps
by
the extent and importance
(as well as the
significantly,
they foreground
of
narration
in
how
of
the
instabilities)
everyday existence,
performance
we continually
our public selves and our ideal
construct and reconstruct
and how arduously we work to
audiences
through the act of narration,
to
the voices that we call
elude the social texts that threaten
overwhelm
our

own.

of Maryland

University
NOTES
1

Richard

hereafter

Aczel,
"Hearing Voices
cited in text as HV.

in Narrative

Texts,"

New Literary History,

29

(1998),

467;

Paradise Lost, ed. Scott Elledge

(New York,
1975), 3. 53-55.
John Milton,
Dorrit Cohn, The Distinction
See, for example,
1999), pp. 123-30.
(Baltimore,
of Fiction
4 The most
include Manfred
studies
Pfister, The Theory and Analysis
important
existing
of
tr. John Halliday
cited in text as
Drama,
120-31; hereafter
1988), pp. 71-76,
(Cambridge,
TA. Brian
in Drama:
"Point of View
Unreliable
Richardson,
Monologue,
Diegetic
2

on
and the Author's
Voice
Narrators,
Stage,"
Stanton
B. Garner Jr., The Absent Voice: Narrative

22 (1988),
Drama,
193-214;
in the Theater (Urbana,
111.,
Comprehension
de l'interlocution,"
L'Espace
Po?tique, 87
and
from Outer
the
Spaces: Narration
Comparative

"'Vox Clamantis':
IssacharofF,
and John Kronik,
"Invasions
315-26;
Art in Spanish America,"
Latin American Theatre Review, 26 (1993), 25-47. Kristin
Morrison's
Canters and Chronicles: The Use ofNarrative
in thePlays of Samuel Beckett and Harold
treatment
Pinter
is the first extended
in the dramas
of
of this subject
1983)
(Chicago,
1989); Michael

(1991),
Dramatic

either

playwright.
119. There
Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre andDrama
(London,
1980), pp. 110-11,
are of course a number
of excellent
in individual
that explore
narration
critical accounts
has not yet appeared.
survey of this practice
plays, but a satisfying
comprehensive
5

Keir

in these terms, as the dramatization

of a first-person
the memory
narrative,
from
similar
forms
that
readily
distinguished
experimental
superficially
a
and so on.
such as dream plays, psychomachias,
present
single consciousness,
7 Tennessee
The Glass Menagerie
cited in text.
Williams,
(New York, 1970), p. 23; hereafter
6

As defined
can

play

Tom

Brian

Collapse
10 David

be

Travesties
(New York,
1975), p. 27.
Stoppard,
"Narrative Poetics
and Postmodern
Richardson,
of Time, Voice,
8 (2000),
and Frame," Narrative,

autonomy
11 Paula
cited
12

Henry
Hwang,
of Gallimard's

The Baltimore
Vogel,
in text as BW.

Brecht

13

on Theatre,

Chatman,
Seymour
on Narrative
Perspectives
14
15
who

M. Butterfly
consciousness
Waltz

Transgression:
3S-34.

of the
violations
(New York,
1989), p. 87. Other
occur on pp. 47 and 78.
and Other Plays
(New York,
1996), p. 20; hereafter

ed. John Willett

(London,
1964), p. 71.
in Voice-Narrated
"New Directions
Cinema,"
ed. David Herman
Ohio,
(Columbus,
Analysis,

Tom

the Circle: Poland

1980-81
(London,
Stoppard,
Squaring
It should be noted
that the drama also includes a character

explains

presentation

the

Theorizing

many of the issues to the narrator

of images
(Stoppard,
Squaring

and at times
the Circle,

New

p. 328.
21-22.

1999),

1984), pp.
as the Witness,
identified

corrects
pp.

in Narratologies:

54,

him
66-67,

and

criticizes

78,

82).

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his
The

694
voice that most
authoritative
potentially
and shown to be fallible.
democratized,
as a
It can also function
16
generative
Benmussa
17

described

Sarah

ley, 1988),
317-18.

Kozloff,

documentaries

narrator,

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

strive

as it does

to achieve

is individualized,

in the cases

of Cocteau

and

below.
Invisible

pp. 41-53;

Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration

cited in text as IS; Chatman,
hereafter

in American

Fiction Film

"Voice-Narrated

(Berke

Cinema,"

pp.

The Singluar Life of Albert Nobbs, tr. Barbara Wright;

H?l?ne
Cixous,
in Benmussa Directs
Barrows; both
(London,
1979).
19 Marguerite
India Song, in India Song. Texte, Th??tre, Film.
in
Duras,
(Paris, 1973);
as India
tr.
Barbara
York,
1976).
(New
Bray
English
Song,
Elin Diamond,
the Romanticism
of Identity: Narrative
20
Interventions
in
"Refusing
18

Simone

Portrait

Benmussa,
tr. Anita

of Dora,

in Performing Feminisms:
Duras,"
Benmussa,
ed. Sue-Ellen
Case
1984), p. 102.
(Baltimore,
in drama
21 Of course, narration
(like all practices)

Churchill,

Feminist

Critical

can become

Theory and Theatre,

entirely

conventional,

as it is in classic
22

Harold

analysis
Canters

of

Noh
theater.
Japanese
Pinter,
Family Voices, in his Plays, rev. ed. (London,
the interplay
of voice and text in this intriguing
work,

IV. For a deft

1993),
see Kristin Morrison,

and Chronicles,

pp. 214-18.
Collected Shorter Plays (New York,
Beckett,
1984), p. 221.
I am here describing
text of the
the voices and events
24
that appear
in the published
a version
at the Arena
is
D.C.
(where Vogel
play. In
staged
Stage in 1999 inWashington,
in residence),
the lines of the Voice
and Voice-Over
have been cut somewhat;
playwright
23

Samuel

the same stage space as the other

they now occupy
has been
the discourse
of early sexology
booths),
have been added.
In the Arena Stage's production
25
Over was played by an Asian American,
women
are constructed
way Asian
American

characters
removed,

(no more blue lights or glass

and several lines from Othello

of this work

October
(14 September-24
1999) Voice
Sue Jin Song, a casting decision
that underlines
the
as the exotic,
sensual Other
in the conventional

psyche.

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