Playfulness an (Un)-performability in Gertrude Stein's Modernist Drama

Abstract

Gertrude Stein's theatre, a theatre of modernism, can be studied as an example of experimental dramaturgy, in that it finds itself suspended between two identities: that of discourse, and that of a theatrical score. This article examines Stein's playwriting as an example of modernist writing and focuses on the challenges that make Stein an essentially "anti-theatrical" writer - one who is only minimally interested in directing. Although Stein's theatre, although it is strongly engaged in puns, rehearsals, and linguistic constructions in place of dramatic conflicts, action and characters, has nevertheless evolved towards a maturity of representation, which is manifested above all in the clear understanding of space and time through the control of language, as well as in its focus on the spectator's experience of the present, which is no longer distracted by linear causality. Although Stein's time offered him many opportunities to experiment with the material and form of his medium, his voice remained essentially a private matter, and his theatrical performances were, for the most part, playful exercises rather than challenges to stage direction. Nevertheless, his textual rearrangements of identities, spaces and things, which are subject to perpetual division and readjustment, gave rise to a particular aesthetic tradition, which has left visible traces on many modern formalist performances.