Subtheme:
Scandalous Performance
Organizers: Jeffery G. Stoynanoff (Penn State Altoona) and
Lynneth Miller Renberg (Anderson University)
The stage and scandal have a long intertwined history. Anyone who has made it through a British literature survey class is likely familiar with much of this history, namely the complete lack of public theater and performance during the Interregnum period of English history. Puritans, and the evangelical offshoots they have produced, hate fun. Beyond the stage, dancing, too, would come to be perceived as scandalous even if it originally was a performance of faith, as Lynneth Miller Renberg has explored in Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640.
Performance continues to be viewed as scandalous by many Christian Nationalists and right-wing politicians in North America. What is a drag show other than a performance? How different is drag from early theater for which most female parts would have been played by male-gendered bodies? Obviously these performances are not exactly the same, but the past can tell us much about our present and our present can open avenues of inquiry into the past. (Need we mention Hamilton or Six?)
Recently, early drama studies has turned to Performance as Research (PAR) to help us make sense of the often fragmentary performance texts and performance histories that have somehow made their ways to us despite time’s best efforts. In this mode of research and writing, scholars consider not only what lies before them on the print or manuscript page, but they also must speculate (at least) or physically block actors (when possible) to hypothesize the extratextual elements of performance. Matthew Sergi’s Practical Cues and Social Spectacle in the Chester Plays has been instrumental in such work, identifying the practical cues that occur within the lines of performance texts, cueing an actor to one end or another. In thinking about scandals (both staged and spontaneous, growing up around performances), PAR offers us a fruitful way to connect texts and bodies, scripts and scandals, performance and interpretation.
The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society enthusiastically sponsors this sub-theme, seeking both veteran scholars of early performance studies as well as folks who seek scandal in performance—whether historical or speculative. We seek papers that attend to the various ways in which scandal may be performed (especially in imagined performances heretofore unstaged) and/or to the ways in which performance itself scandalizes. Papers incorporating performance in their planned presentation are especially welcome.
