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112 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION
pieces that construct lesbian spectatorial communities tend to drop from the
performative address the heterosexuality that underpins hegemonic
representations, or what Monique Wittig might describe as the cultural products
of “the straight mind” (1980:103–111). For spectators whose sole experience
with dominant culture is one of being either erased entirely or foregrounded as
tragically “other” against a (hetero)sexuality inscribed as fiercely normative, the
experience of being addressed as if inhabiting a discursive space, an elsewhere
eked out in the gaps of hegemonic representations, is both profound and
exhilarating.
Traditionally, regardless of genre, what has marked WOW productions is that
they are peopled entirely with lesbian characters. For instance, in Heart of
Scorpion, Alice Forrester’s 1984 parody of the romance novel—a form that can
scarcely be imagined outside of heterosexual dating and mating—all the couples
were lesbian couples. There was only one man in the play and “he” was
represented by a life-size, homemade-looking, stuffed dummy with a somewhat
piglike face. He had no lines. Using a television talk-show format for her
nightclub act entitled Carmelita Tropicana Chats, Carmelita addressed her
“studio audience” and, by extension, her entire television viewing audience as if
all were lesbians. 2 The cast of Lisa Kron’s 1988 production, Paradykes Lost,
which loosely followed a conventional murder-mystery formula, included a
detective, an ingénue and her grande dame aunt, a couple (one of whom had a
history, in the form a liaison, with the detective), a butler, and an assortment of
eccentric singles. Kron used butch-femme as a cultural paradigm for lesbian
sexuality to build a play in which all the characters had women’s names, all were
played by women, and all were explicitly identified as lesbian in the dialogue.
None of these productions constructs a world “out there” of heterosexual culture
that the world of the play and its characters are up against. As a result, the
operations of heterosexuality as an institution are made visible by the unrelenting
and rather jolting presumption that heterosexuals do not exist.
Configuring plays peopled almost exclusively with lesbian characters
represents one strategy for making work that insists on a lesbian worldview. Of
course it is not the only way to create a theatre for lesbians, a theatre that
responds to lesbian subjectivities. But, until recently, it has been a central and
crucial strategy for WOW, one that has distinguished it from its gay male
counterpart, that is, Camp or Ridiculous Theatre in which men impersonate
women in narratives peopled for the most part by heterosexual characters. In
1988 a group of WOW artists began to experiment with representing
heterosexual couples during their improvisational rehearsal process. Although
the idea was abandoned before the piece opened, the notion of cross-dressing
was in the air and hotly debated among WOW practitioners.
Within the year, the idea was played out in a production of Sheridan’s School
for Scandal, directed by Alice Forrester and Heidi Griffiths (Plate 9). All the
roles were played by women including the male characters, which were played
by women in drag. In his review of the production for The Village Voice, Robert