Drama Trauma - Specters of Race and Sexuality in Performance, Video and Art (Hardcover)

In this cross-disciplinary study, Timothy Murray examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power. Establishing a retrospective dialogue between past and present, stage and video, this work links the impact of trauma on recent political projects in performance and video with the specters of difference haunting Shakespeare's plays. Murray provides close readings of cultural formations as diverse as Shakespearean drama, the Statue of Liberty, contemporary plays by women, African-American performance, and feminist interventions in video, performance and installation. The texts discussed include: installations by Mary Kelly and Dawn Dedeaux; plays by Ntozake Shange, Rochelle Owens, Adrienne Kennedy, Marsha Norman and Amiri Baraka; performances by Robbie McCauley, Jordan, Orlan, and Carmelita Tropicana; stage, film and video productions of "King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet" and "All's Well that Ends Well."