Performing Gender, Gender as Performance: Politics, Aesthetics and Performativity in Dacia Maraini’s ‘Barricade’ Theatre

Abstract

Dacia Maraini’s 1970s dramaturgical oeuvre, which the author has identified as her most ‘barricade’ theatre, evidences an undisputable commitment to the cause of second-wave Italian feminism. While the connection between social protest and women’s self-representation in Maraini’s theatre has amply, and convincingly, been discussed (Sumeli Weinberg 1993; Cavallaro 2000; Mariani: 1998, 2000; Cruciata 2003; Marinelli and Matassa 2008), her use of feminist ideology in disrupting existing aesthetic conventions has received scarce scholarly attention. Current criticism of feminist theatre in general, and of Maraini’s in particular, seems to privilege the dramatic text at the expenses of an equally as important analysis of the visual aspects of the theatrical performance per se. This article acknowledges the dramatic work as an embodied form of narration that, as such, is best analysed by taking into account, also, its aesthetic components. It discusses two plays, Il Manifesto (1969) and La donna perfetta (1974), that are representative of Maraini’s gender politics and theatrical aesthetics at the time they were written. Looking not just at the written text, but also at the original video recordings of the performances, the aim of my study is twofold. Firstly, it assesses the use of theatre in rethinking the representation of women’s gender roles in 1970s. Secondly, it foregrounds the impact of feminist ideology in rupturing existing dramatic conventions. Continuing the line of mimetic rejection inaugurated in the Italian context by Luigi Pirandello amongst others, whilst also distancing itself from the excess of experimentalism of the coeval neo-avant-garde, Maraini’s feminist theatre proves a convincing political tool to restore the voice of women’s long silenced body — with the focus on the theatrical (in the sense of both dramatic and deliberately exaggerated) nature of the gendered identity performed on stage. Starting from the premise that our masculine and feminine roles are not rooted in biology or anatomy, but in codes of behaviour that are learned and then re-enacted on a daily basis (Butler 1988, 1999), the plays discussed here exemplify the way in which feminist performance can become a privileged site through which these reiterations emerge, and theatre the space that makes this emergence possible.