Toward Unmediated Performance: Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Jennifer Schmidt
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JENNIFER SCHMIDT received her Doctor of Fine Arts in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama in 2018. Her dissertation, “The Silent Sex Speaks: Female Solo Performance in America from 1890-2000,” traces the history of the one-woman show in America, focusing on women who write and perform their own monologue-based solo shows. Jennifer received the American Theater and Drama Society’s Emerging Scholar Award in 2015 for her paper “The Virtuosic Avant-Garde: Process, Play, and the Everyday” and has presented papers at ATHE, ASTR, Theatre Symposium, and the Mid-America Theatre Conference. In addition to her work as a scholar and dramaturg, Jennifer enjoys performing as an actor and musician.
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Abstract
Working across media, in television, film, and live performance, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have spent the majority of their careers operating within the confines of popular culture and mainstream entertainment. As politically-engaged artists, their work for television and film frequently comments on the unique place they occupy in pop culture, projecting a certain discomfort with the commercialism of their medium even as they work within it. Their consciousness about the role of media and technology in modern life transfers to the work they developed for the stage, in particular, their lauded one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. In Search for Signs, Wagner (as writer) and Tomlin (as performer) employ shifting modes of addressing the audience to bring attention to the layers of mediation present in life and art. By examining the evolving audience/performer relationship, this paper explores how Wagner and Tomlin weave into the framework of their one-woman show an argument for the importance of live, unmediated performance to both a feminist and humanist worldview.
Working across media, in television, film, and live performance, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have spent the majority of their careers operating within the confines of popular culture and mainstream entertainment. As politically-engaged artists, their work for television and film frequently comments on the unique place they occupy in pop culture, projecting a certain discomfort with the commercialism of their medium even as they work within it. Their consciousness about the role of media and technology in modern life transfers to the work they developed for the stage, in particular, their lauded one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. In Search for Signs, Wagner (as writer) and Tomlin (as performer) employ shifting modes of addressing the audience to bring attention to the layers of mediation present in life and art. By examining the evolving audience/performer relationship, this paper explores how Wagner and Tomlin weave into the framework of their one-woman show an argument for the importance of live, unmediated performance to both a feminist and humanist worldview.
| etudesdec2018schmidt.pdf |
