129-144

Word and spectacle: new configurations

• Mendelman, Lisa

Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus (1990) presents versions of love that problematize its construct as a straightforward process of discovering a subject's stable, knowable interior. Drawing up­ on a range of theories to define romantic love as an engagement of physical desire and emotional intimacy, this essay reads Parks's staged silences, called "Spells," to explore the affective valence of these non-verbal exchanges between distinct bodies. Parks's definition of "Spells" as a "place of great (unspoken) emotion... a place for an emotional transition" highlights a series of bodies—the architecture of the text, the characters in the play, their historical analogs, the audience, the directors, the actors, the reader—all of whom participate, to varying degrees, in the affective experience evoked by unregulated public space. The Spells thus allow an interaction that highlights the complex dynamics of love—the ambiguities of indirect transmission, the freedom of individual interpretation, and the possibility of misunderstanding/ misalliance or mistaken intimacy.

• Arts
• Languages and Literature

• Θέατρο
• Λογοτεχνία
• Ψυχολογία
• Emotions

δραματουργία

The text strikes back: the dynamics of performativity., Περιέχει βιβλιογραφία