WOMEN’S LABOR: FORNÉS’ LEGACY
Topics
THEA UT 801.002 ~ 4 credits
Date & Time: TBD
Professor Gwendolyn Alker
ga41@nyu.edu
In this Seminar, we will look at gendered labor in plays and performances in relation to neoliberal theories of economic thought. María Irene Fornés’s Mud (1983) and Conduct of Life (1985) will serve as entry points into her body of work and the larger discussion of women’s labor in a theatrical context. One of the most influential American dramatists of the twentieth century, Forné's wide body of work frequently engaged with this topic. As a playwright, designer, director, and a queer woman, she also grappled with how to get the work of theatrical production done. Her plays will be read alongside others with similar concerns, including Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, Naomi Wallace’s Slaughter City, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls among others. We will read plays alongside texts on the economics of neoliberalism, social reproduction theory, and Marxist feminism, asking how the frame of women’s work produces an understanding of gendered cultural laborers and consumers today.
The final third of the class will focus on Fornés’s little-known play, Evelyn Brown (A Diary), a work taken entirely from the journal of an early 20th-century housekeeper. Originally staged in 1980, Evelyn Brown (A Diary) was recently recovered and restaged as part of La MaMa’s 2023 season for which Professor Alker served as the production’s dramaturg. Evelyn Brown will act as a case study to learn about the role of the dramaturg—another site for “women’s work”—before, during, and after theatrical production.