Fall 2009
Letter from the Editor
Carolyn D. Roark
Editorial: The “Don’t” Factor: Faith and Repressive Sexual Ethics
John Fletcher, Guest Editor
Highlight: Love in the Time of Derrida
Henry Bial
Feature: Demanding the Divine: Terrence McNally’s Gay Passion Play CORPUS CHRISTI
Thomas Fish
Feature: Goddess-Men: Nationalism, Brahminism and Female Impersonation in Indian Religious Theatre
Patrick Murphree
This article explores in depth two of the five unique categories of Indian theatre: devotional and ritual theatre. In the devotional theatre, audiences experience the actors as literal embodiments of divine beings. A reitual theatre performance invokes the gods through an established sequence of actions that effect the transformation of an individual, group, or an entire village. What is most distinctive about both forms is theinclusion of enactment of a myth by performers representing divine beings. The article also raises several questions about the gender of god/goddess impersonators in Indian theatres and the obvious decline in the number of female performers.
Feature: ‘A Greedie Desire’: Performing Puritan Passion
Simon duToit
Highlight: Under the Tamarind Tree
Rebecca Nesvet
Profile: Tara Dhatu
Jessica Zebrine Gray
Profile: The Passion of Saints Sergius and Bacchus
Jacek Scarso
Profile: Stan Denman’s Embracing
Kari Hatfield
Book & Performance Reviews:
- Jennifer A. Kokai—Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920, Katie N. Johnson
- Brian Eugenio Herrera—The Viagra Ad Venture: Masculinity, Media, and the Performance of Sexual Health, Jay Baglia
- Peter Novak—The Queerest Art: Esays on Lesbian and Gay Theater, Alisa Solomon and Framji Minwalla, Eds.
- Jeff D. Grace—Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality, Fran Ferder and John Heagle
- Brett D. Johnson—The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, Mn
- Dorothy Dodge Robbins—Phèdre, National Theatre, London
- Laura Grace Pattillo—Next Fall, Playwrights Horizons
- Kenneth Robbins—Death and the King’s Horseman, National Theatre, London