Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Jake Jakaitis

Second Advisor

Darlene Hantzis

Third Advisor

Christopher Berchild

Abstract

In the past fifteen years, the performance of interviews has become a pronounced theatric form, ranging from Sam Woodhouse's Nuevo California to Leigh Fondakowski's I Think I Like Girls and even, some would argue, to the postmodem deconstructions of race and ethnography found in much of Culture Clash's work. Despite all of this, Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, and the Tectonic Theater's The Laramie Project remain the three interview-based plays that still receive the most attention, both through productions and academic discourse. Likewise, although not as widely discussed, Smith's newest interview-based work, House Arrest, provides an interesting touchstone because of its abandonment of the sparse staging that marked her earlier performances. Additionally, notwithstanding their stylistic differences, all four plays still ask, in their own ways, many of the same questions that were inherent to Smith's early work: how does one artistically shape documentary theater, how can ethnographic work be "authentically" performed, can theater reconstruct community, and what are the political motivations and implications of performing interviews? Thus, this study analyzes Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and House Arrest, Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, and the Tectonic Theater's The Laramie Project in terms of artifice, ethnography, community, and politics, concluding that, when done with ethnographic integrity and artistic skill, the performance of interviews provides an opportunity to create community and explore cultural myths through the liveness of theater.

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