Women and food in the work of American female playwrights (2005)
Undergraduate: Lauren Shepard
Faculty Advisor: Julie Fishell
Department: Dramatic Art
For humans, food is not only life sustaining but also one of the most important means of self-definition, especially when it is shared. This ritual of consumption is a relative of the dramatic form. Theater is used as a means of expression of the people by whom and for whom it is performed. On the stage, we see real life exemplified and we participate with others, in public, in this shared, communal experience. If food is examined in the context of theater, interesting patterns emerge. This convergence of elements creates an even clearer picture of society, as the stage magnifies food?s already substantial insight. Furthermore, a comparison of food habits and theatrical trends exhibit similar trends in the two areas in American society over the past one hundred years. One of the most notable parallels exists in the question of gender. Women are explicitly linked to food, symbolically and physically, in American life. This relationship has been utilized on stage by both female and male playwrights as a reflection of American life. My research focuses on the work of women playwrights because they give an even more concentrated insight into the use of women and food on stage. Not only do these playwrights write characters who are affected by their society, but they, as women, are as well. I look specifically at the works of writers at the turn of the century, when changes in the status of women were taking place. Zona Gale, Rachel Crothers, and Susan Glaspell all write women characters who deal with the expression and suppression of women by using food and dining on stage.
Finally, I carried a out a case study of these ideas in my production of modern playwright Tina Howe?s The Art of Dining. I directed this play in the cooking classroom of A Southern Season and it became an interdisciplinary study of the combination of food and dining and theater. Also, although one hundred years later, it explored many of the issues from early feminist works. One o