Book Review
Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere. Edited by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; pp. xvi + 238, 19 illustrations. $109.99 hardcover, $84.99 ebook.
Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson open Performing Dream Homes by noting the etymological link between theatre spaces and houses: “full house,” “dark house,” “front-of-house manager,” etc. (3). They write, “In this theatrical lexicology, house paradoxically merges the private, intimate space of the home with the robust, public gathering space of the hall” (3, original emphasis). Liminality is an appropriate thematic to begin the collection, which considers multiple ways in which houses and homes/homelands/home towns are performed or performative. If this sounds broad, it’s because the collection illustrates just how tense and contested relationships between home and theatre can be.
Performing Dream Homes is divided into three sections, each with a distinct focus—though shared concerns do cut across the divisions. The first section, “Family Homes on Stage, shows how stagings of houses/homes often explore the difficulty of communication across barriers of race, gender, class, etc. Jocelyn Buckner’s essay examines racial tensions around home ownership and community in Clybourne Park and Beneatha’s Place; then Lourdes Arciniega shows how Susan Glaspell staged the home as a space where women could form community to resist patriarchal oppression; finally Amanda Clarke writes about how the experience of other people’s homes broke down ideological barriers between a staunch Northern Irish Protestant and his Catholic neighbors in A Night in November. In each of these plays, houses become sites of social tension and change. The second section, “Making Homes Material,” focuses on the physicality of stage houses, and how those spaces enable or constrict performances. Ann Shanahan builds on practice-based observations to theorize a set of conventions governing how women are linked to domestic spaces in many dramas, exemplifying these connections through a performance analysis of The House of Bernarda Alba; an essay by Jessie Glover links testimonial theatre to lived discussions in Rachel’s House, a transitional home for women getting out of prison; and the section wraps up with Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer’s analysis of a performance about the housing crisis in Canadian First Nations communities, where chronic overcrowding and poorly constructed houses have been largely ignored by the Canadian government and public. The collection’s final section, “Home as Public Performance,” looks at how public spaces/performances shape ideas of home in different contexts. Iris Fischer examines the performance culture within and public role of the Grey Towers house in Milford, PA, which was both a private performance space for the family and a piece of public architecture for the town; Chase Bringardner dives into Southern Appalachian medicine shows, which were public theatrical performances that relied on certain conceptions of home, particularly home as a space of consumption; and Emily Klein analyzes two hometown performances that blur the lines between space/memory and local/tourist in Pittsburgh and San Francisco.
While the subject matter of individual essays differs dramatically, they share sets of major concerns. Two of the most prominent are how conceptions of home/house/domesticity shape gender roles on stage, and the politics of using/occupying (theatre) space. It’s unsurprising that many of the essays use a feminist lens, because, as Shanahan puts it, in patriarchal (Western) culture, “a woman’s creativity and agency, and conflicts concerning these, relate to domestic space…The woman is connected to the house, which can be read as her body” (89). Several essays analyze how dramatists or theatre artists attempt to disrupt or renegotiate this gendered association in the name of liberation—from the building of women’s communal links in Glaspell’s plays (Arciniega), to staging resistance to ideologically expected narratives (Shanahan), to building mutual support during trauma, crisis, and stabilization (Glover), women’s issues are often central to plays set in or around the home.
Another shared thematic is the political use/conception of space. The political dimensions vary widely: Buckner and Neuerburg-Denzer investigate whether or not certain people have a right to homes/homelands; Fischer looks at how public versus private spaces are demarcated; and Buckner, Clarke, and Klein discuss who gets to define the character of neighborhoods or hometowns, how, and for whom. Because space is heavily loaded with issues of ownership, community, nostalgia/memory/history, and encounters with people who are either similar to or different from ourselves, control of and engagement with spaces is always contestable. This is especially true when those spaces are home, that is, when they bear the cultural resonances of safety, welcome, feeling at ease, etc. that US ideology loads onto the image of home.
Performing Dream Homes is an extremely useful collection that will benefit both scholars and theatre practitioners. It will especially be of interest to feminists, performance studies scholars, theatre artists, and material culture scholars. The essays are relatively short and very readable, making the collection easily accessible for students and non-scholars, while still presenting theoretical insights that professional scholars will value. The book admirably engages a theoretically rich, complex set of ideas. The essays “illustrate how the concept of home operates as a dynamic signifier full of contradiction and potential, a private space constructed through public concepts of value and access, and a public space realized through intimate, personal exchanges” (15-16). As the editors observe, this collection does not address every issue related to home and performance (16), but it provides prescient insights and a jumping off point for more work to be done in this fruitful realm of scholarship.
Phillip Zapkin
Pennsylvania State University
Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson open Performing Dream Homes by noting the etymological link between theatre spaces and houses: “full house,” “dark house,” “front-of-house manager,” etc. (3). They write, “In this theatrical lexicology, house paradoxically merges the private, intimate space of the home with the robust, public gathering space of the hall” (3, original emphasis). Liminality is an appropriate thematic to begin the collection, which considers multiple ways in which houses and homes/homelands/home towns are performed or performative. If this sounds broad, it’s because the collection illustrates just how tense and contested relationships between home and theatre can be.
Performing Dream Homes is divided into three sections, each with a distinct focus—though shared concerns do cut across the divisions. The first section, “Family Homes on Stage, shows how stagings of houses/homes often explore the difficulty of communication across barriers of race, gender, class, etc. Jocelyn Buckner’s essay examines racial tensions around home ownership and community in Clybourne Park and Beneatha’s Place; then Lourdes Arciniega shows how Susan Glaspell staged the home as a space where women could form community to resist patriarchal oppression; finally Amanda Clarke writes about how the experience of other people’s homes broke down ideological barriers between a staunch Northern Irish Protestant and his Catholic neighbors in A Night in November. In each of these plays, houses become sites of social tension and change. The second section, “Making Homes Material,” focuses on the physicality of stage houses, and how those spaces enable or constrict performances. Ann Shanahan builds on practice-based observations to theorize a set of conventions governing how women are linked to domestic spaces in many dramas, exemplifying these connections through a performance analysis of The House of Bernarda Alba; an essay by Jessie Glover links testimonial theatre to lived discussions in Rachel’s House, a transitional home for women getting out of prison; and the section wraps up with Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer’s analysis of a performance about the housing crisis in Canadian First Nations communities, where chronic overcrowding and poorly constructed houses have been largely ignored by the Canadian government and public. The collection’s final section, “Home as Public Performance,” looks at how public spaces/performances shape ideas of home in different contexts. Iris Fischer examines the performance culture within and public role of the Grey Towers house in Milford, PA, which was both a private performance space for the family and a piece of public architecture for the town; Chase Bringardner dives into Southern Appalachian medicine shows, which were public theatrical performances that relied on certain conceptions of home, particularly home as a space of consumption; and Emily Klein analyzes two hometown performances that blur the lines between space/memory and local/tourist in Pittsburgh and San Francisco.
While the subject matter of individual essays differs dramatically, they share sets of major concerns. Two of the most prominent are how conceptions of home/house/domesticity shape gender roles on stage, and the politics of using/occupying (theatre) space. It’s unsurprising that many of the essays use a feminist lens, because, as Shanahan puts it, in patriarchal (Western) culture, “a woman’s creativity and agency, and conflicts concerning these, relate to domestic space…The woman is connected to the house, which can be read as her body” (89). Several essays analyze how dramatists or theatre artists attempt to disrupt or renegotiate this gendered association in the name of liberation—from the building of women’s communal links in Glaspell’s plays (Arciniega), to staging resistance to ideologically expected narratives (Shanahan), to building mutual support during trauma, crisis, and stabilization (Glover), women’s issues are often central to plays set in or around the home.
Another shared thematic is the political use/conception of space. The political dimensions vary widely: Buckner and Neuerburg-Denzer investigate whether or not certain people have a right to homes/homelands; Fischer looks at how public versus private spaces are demarcated; and Buckner, Clarke, and Klein discuss who gets to define the character of neighborhoods or hometowns, how, and for whom. Because space is heavily loaded with issues of ownership, community, nostalgia/memory/history, and encounters with people who are either similar to or different from ourselves, control of and engagement with spaces is always contestable. This is especially true when those spaces are home, that is, when they bear the cultural resonances of safety, welcome, feeling at ease, etc. that US ideology loads onto the image of home.
Performing Dream Homes is an extremely useful collection that will benefit both scholars and theatre practitioners. It will especially be of interest to feminists, performance studies scholars, theatre artists, and material culture scholars. The essays are relatively short and very readable, making the collection easily accessible for students and non-scholars, while still presenting theoretical insights that professional scholars will value. The book admirably engages a theoretically rich, complex set of ideas. The essays “illustrate how the concept of home operates as a dynamic signifier full of contradiction and potential, a private space constructed through public concepts of value and access, and a public space realized through intimate, personal exchanges” (15-16). As the editors observe, this collection does not address every issue related to home and performance (16), but it provides prescient insights and a jumping off point for more work to be done in this fruitful realm of scholarship.
Phillip Zapkin
Pennsylvania State University
