Table Of ContentPEERING BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Studies in Modern Drama
Kimball King, Series Editor
THEATRE UNDER DECONSTRUCTION? BLACK WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
A Question ofA pproach Visions on the American Stage
by Stratos E. Constantinidis edited by Carol P. Marsh-Lockett
THE PINTER ETHIC JOHN OSBORNE
The Erotic Aesthetic Vituperative Artist
by Penelope Prentice edited by Luc Gilleman
PAST CRIMSON, PAST WOE MODERN DRAMATISTS
The Shakespeare-Beckett A Casebook of Major British, Irish, and
Connection American Playwrights
edited by Anne Marie Drew edited by Kimball King
BARNESTORM THE THEATER OF TONY KUSHNER
The Plays of Peter Barnes Living Past Hope
by Bernard F. Dukore by James Fisher
NEW THEATRE VISTAS ALAN BENNETT
Modem Movements in A Critical Introduction
International Theatre by Joseph H. O'Mealy
edited by Judy Lee Oliva
THE PLAYWRIGHT'S MUSE
DAVID MAMET'S edited by Joan Herrington
GLENGARRY GLEN Ross
Text and Performance PEERING BEHIND THE CURTAIN
edited by Leslie Kane Disability, Illness, and the
Extraordinary Body in
HOLLYWOOD ON STAGE Contemporary Theater
Playwrights Evaluate the Culture edited by Thomas Fahy and
Industry Kimball King
edited by Kimball King
READING STEPHEN SONDHEIM
A Collection of Critical Essays
edited by Sandor Goodhart
PEERING BEHIND THE CURTAIN
DISABILITY, ILLNESS, AND THE EXTRAORDINARY
BODY IN CONTEMPORARY THEATER
EDITED BY THOMAS FAHY AND KIMBALL KING
First published in 2002 by
Routledge
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Published in Great Britain by
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This edition published 2012 by Routledge
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
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New York, NY 10017 Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Copyright © 2002 by Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peering behind the curtain: disability, illness, and the extraordinary body in
contemporary theater / edited by Thomas Fahy and Kimball King.
p. cm. - (Studies in modem drama; v. 18)
ISBN 0-415-92997-0
1. American drama-20th century-History and criticism. 2. Handicapped in liter
ature. 3. English drama-20th century-History and criticism. 4. Physically handi
capped in literature. 5. Abnormalities, Human, in literature. 6. Body, Human, in
literature. 7. Diseases in literature. 8. Medicine in literature. 9. Sick in literature. I.
Fahy, Thomas Richard. II. King, Kimball. III. Series.
PS338.P4 P44 2001
812'.50935208-dc2l 2001048571
Contents
General Editor's Note vii
KIMBALL KING
Peering behind the Curtain: An Introduction ix
THOMASFAHY
PART I
Between Two Worlds: The Emerging Aesthetic of the National 3
Theater of the Deaf
KANTA KOCHHAR-LINDGREN
"Better Me Than You": Children of a Lesser God, Deaf 16
Education, and Paternalism
ROBERT C. SPIRKO
Violence, Pain, Pleasure: Wit 24
PAMELA COOPER
Making an Art out of Suffering: Bill T. Jones's Uncle Tom 35
TEss CHAKKALAKAL
"It Hurts?": Afflicted Bodies in Beckett's Drama 47
RUBY COHN
Depression-the Undiagnosed Disability in Marsha Norman's 55
'night, Mother
SARAH REUNING
"Some Unheard-of Thing": Freaks, Families, and Coming of 68
Age in The Member of the Wedding
THOMAS FAHY
Young Doctors Come to See the Elephant Man 84
JOHANNA SHAPIRO
v
vi Contents
PART II
Acting without Limits: Profiles of Three Physically 95
Disabled Performers
LILAH F. MORRIS
Two-Act Play 107
NANCY BEZANT
An Interview with James MacDonald 111
THOMASFAHY
Balance Is Stillness 116
A PLAY BY JAMES MACDoNALD
Contributors 175
Index 177
General Editor's Note
Linking together the essays in this volume is the underlying conviction that what is
generally regarded as a "disability" is in large part a social construct. The "able"
bodied make the world's rulers, and an individual's sense of self-worth too often
depends upon the way he or she is evaluated by those "in charge." A great deal has
been written about "marginalized" people-those who have been relegated by the
"mainstream" culture to a shadowy borderline beyond its official parameters. Women,
racial and religious minorities, homosexuals, the poor, the elderly, and countless
others often exist on the fringes of a patriarchal society based on power, wealth, and
hereditary entitlement. If the marginalized agree to accept the limits society presently
imposes upon them, they may be tolerated by the mainstream, especially when they
assume a posture favored by the establishment. Nevertheless, people whose physical
faculties have been severely impaired or destroyed are often unable to coexist peace
fully with the majority. They remain apart from the mainstream; their admittance is
steadfastly denied. Any study of currently perceived incapacities reveals what con
cepts society believes it must value and preserve. And it cruelly selects for survival
those best able to maintain its present equilibrium.
The bourgeoisie appropriated modem theater, and the novelty of seeing ordinary
doctors, lawyers, professors, and clergymen, in plays like Ibsen's or Shaw's, grap
pling with emergent social conditions, almost masked the hegemony of contemporary
culture. The theater has been much slower to acknowledge the painful dilemmas of
physically "different" people than have other literary genres, such as the novel.
Even more than stage plays, contemporary movies have mirrored the ideals soci
ety aspires to-a specific kind of physical beauty, bodily strength, and engaging per
sonality being the traits that define the "star" of modem cinema. Thus, two of the
most accessible cultural forms, theater and film, reinforce stereotypes of physically
perfect people who possess the qualities essential for success.
Curiously, one of the founders of the modem theater, Ibsen, was one of the first
to note the presence of the disabled, yet he focused on issues believed to be more rel
evant to the bourgeois establishment, such as gender inequalities, a disregard for the
environment, and ethical versus unethical leadership. But the specter of disability
vii
viii General Editor's Note
always darkened his mise-en-scenes: Dr. Rank's mysterious terminal illness,
Oswald's syphilis, Lovborg's alcoholism, Hedwig's blindness, to name a few exam
ples. Still, Nora becomes an icon of the women's movement in A Doll's House as we
bristle at her being treated as an inferior, unable to borrow money without a man's
permission and beholden to the whims of an autocratic, moralizing husband. It's easy
to forget that the play is also about her husband, Helmer, whose illness, probably
tuberculosis, necessitated Nora's risky and disastrous forgery in the first place. To be
physically unable to care for his family made any Scandinavian male feel emascu
lated and worthless. Weakness of body was equated with weakness of spirit. There
fore, Helmer's response to his illness and recuperation is predictably one of utter
denial. Nora waits in vain for Helmer to acknowledge her sacrifices on his behalf. To
thank her for taking on his role as family provider and authority figure would have
betrayed his own warped sense of masculinity. Yet Ibsen never probes the issue of dis
ability in a contemporary society newly dominated by the middle class.
As the dominant modes of drama moved from realism to naturalism, expression
ism, and eventually absurdism, philosophical issues of social injustice took prece
dence over individual suffering. When personal tragedies were emphasized, the
individual characters were more frequently handicapped by emotional rather than
physical infirmities.
Critical interest in multiculturalism, a recognition that the "outsider" in the mod
em world is nearly anyone who is not male, white, able-bodied, and of European
descent has given expression in the theater to explorations of "otherness": African
American and Asian culture, women's issues, and all aspects of society unfamiliar to
the world's dominant forces. Plays that concentrate on people who differ so dramati
cally in appearance and behavior from the world's accepted power brokers have
begun to appear on stage and will command an increasing share of audience attention.
Already a dozen major universities offer curricula in disability studies, and the Uni
versity of Chicago awards a Ph.D. in that subject. Thomas Fahy and I hope that this
present contribution to the Studies in Modem Drama series will foster a new aware
ness of a large segment of humanity frequently neglected on stage, as well as in life.
Kimball King
General Editor
Peering behind the Curtain:
An Introduction
THOMASFAHY
At the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). L. B. Jeffries (James Stewart),
who has been watching his neighbors through binoculars and a telephoto lens for
days, is finally caught in the act of looking. Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), the man
Jeffries suspects of killing his wife, sees him spying from across the courtyard. Like
Stewart's character, the audience has participated in the transgressive and voyeuristic
pleasures of this mystery, but the safety of Stewart's dimly lit apartment, and by
extension the darkened theater, is shattered when Thorwald looks back. He catches
both Jeffries and us peering into his "secret, private world," and the dramatic tension
of the film's final moments comes, in part, from our own sense of guilt.
If, as Jeffries's nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) laments earlier in the film, "we've
become a race of Peeping Toms," what does this desire say about us? About our need
to observe and then create narratives to explain the strange and unusual? The film
repeatedly moralizes on the dangers of such surveillance ("What people ought to do is
get outside their own house and look in for a change"), but the problem of rear-window
ethics is never resolved, particularly in regards to disability. At the opening of the film,
we stare at Jeffries's disabled body, and Hitchcock immediately answers our unspoken
questions about his condition: How did this happen? Is it permanent? Photographs of
car crashes and explosions hang from the apartment walls like trophies to Jeffries's
mobility and masculinity, and the magazine editor who mistakenly calls him with a
new assignment one week before his cast comes off chastises Jeffries for breaking his
leg while taking risky photographs at an auto race. Hitchcock is clearly not interested
in a narrative of disability-relegating Jeffries to a wheelchair only temporarily and
presenting Thorwald's invalid wife as mobile. Instead, the wheelchair, like the walled
in courtyard, becomes a metaphor for his reluctance to get married and serves as a plot
device to justify his voyeurism: "You've got to get me out of here. Six weeks sitting in
a two-room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors."
His captivity mitigates his (as well as our own) ethical reservations about gazing into
the private lives of others. How else would one spend long, hot summer afternoons?
Disability not only demands its own narrative-an explanation of the deviant
body-but its inherent difference calls attention to all of the bodies on screen and on
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