Like a Natural Woman

In this work, I promote a dialogue between Drama andPerformance Studies concerning the performance ofgender in everyday life and on the stage. WhileJudith Butler and others have argued that theperformativity of gender must be examined outside oftheatre, I argue that theatre can provide us with aunique lens through which to examine aspects ofgender that can be overlooked in everyday life. Theplays and performance art I have chosen highlightdifferent modes of performing gender throughrepresentations of the female body, which introducethe tension between the discursively produced bodyand the lived, phenomenological body onstage. Byexploring this tension, I argue that theperformativity of gender onstage arises from acombination of words, the presentation of tangiblebodies, and the audience's response to the stageaction. I bring together iconic playwright SamuelBeckett with Cuban-American performance artist AnaMendieta and Irish playwright Marina Carr in order torepresent different modes of performance. This studyshould prove useful for scholars in theatre,performance studies, and gender studies, who areinterested in examining gender in a theatrical context.