remember the ladies: exploring feminine archetypes in three plays

268 Pages·2016·1.48 MB·English

University of New Mexico
UNM Digital Repository
Theatre & Dance ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations
6-9-2016
REMEMBER THE LADIES: EXPLORING
FEMININE ARCHETYPES IN THREE PLAYS
Pamela Denise Hinson
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Hinson, Pamela Denise. "REMEMBER THE LADIES: EXPLORING FEMININE ARCHETYPES IN THREE PLAYS." (2016).
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/thea_etds/39
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Pamela Denise Hinson
Candidate

Theater and Dance
Department

This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication:

Approved by the Dissertation Committee:

Gregory S. Moss , Chairperson

Matthew McDuffie

Amanda Hamp

Laura Haniford
REMEMBER THE LADIES:
EXPLORING FEMININE ARCHETYPES IN THREE PLAYS

by

PAMELA DENISE HINSON
B.A. Literary Arts, Prescott College, 2003
M.A. Humanities, California State University Dominguez Hills, 2010

THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts
Dramatic Writing

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

May 2016
REMEMBER THE LADIES:
Exploring Feminine Archetypes in Three Plays

By

Pamela Denise Hinson
B.A. Literary Arts, Prescott College, 2003
M.A. Humanities, California State University Dominguez Hills, 2010
M.F.A. Dramatic Writing, University of New Mexico, 2016

ABSTRACT
In this essay, I will summarize my growth and learning in this MFA program. I will use a
theoretical framework of archetypal and feminist research to analyze my own work, including:
Lilith, Darling, Shared Misery, and Angels All Die. This essay will help to organize and apply
my theories on feminine archetypes, identify methods for continuing growth in my artistic range,
and define my role as a scholar-artist. The archetypes that will be addressed will include the dual
Goddess, the Madwoman, and the Trickster.

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT.……………………………………………………………………………………. ii
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………….. 1
BEING A SCHOLAR-ARTIST:
PRACTICE AS RESEARCH …………………………………………………………………… 4
LILITH, DARLING:
THE IMPORTANCE OF RED SHOES ………………………………………………………… 6
SHARED MISERY:
RELEASING THE MADWOMAN …………………………………………………………… 13
ANGELS ALL DIE:
THE POSTMODERN FEMALE TRICKSTER ………………………………………………. 18
CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………….………………….. 26
WORKS CITED ………………………………………………………….…………………… 29
THE WORKS:
LILITH, DARLING…………………………………………………………………………….32
SHARED MISERY……………………………………………………………………………100
ANGELS ALL DIE……………………………………………………………………………159

iii
Hinson 1

INTRODUCTION
1982: I am sitting in the back of a yellow school bus, diesel fumes seeping
through a floor so old and worn thin I catch glimpses of the highway racing beneath us.
It’s dark and very late. I’m huddled under a jacket, legs drawn up against the seat in
front of me, and I’m terrified—thrillingly, deeply, and deliciously scared out of my wits.
The one doing the terrifying is a fellow classmate and team member. We are
returning from a softball tournament in Espanola, all of us dirty and tired, but Vangie’s
story will not let us sleep. Softly, just her voice and the hum of the bus in the dark, she
tells us a story about her uncle’s friend’s brother who dared to insult an elder of the
tribe and then paid the price while driving home alone in the dead of night on the Bisti
Highway south of Farmington, New Mexico. Vangie describes how this young man found
himself being pursued by a Skinwalker, a man capable of transforming into an animal.
The Skinwalker chased the young man for twenty miles before he was able to escape
the creature. It is said, Vangie tells us, that the young man was never the same, and he
suffered terrible nightmares until the end of his short life.
This was only one of the many stories I heard on those long bus rides. Other
stories of ghosts, La Llorona, omens, and demons were common amongst my
teammates, and I told my fair share, too. After all, I was the daughter of a woman who
filled my childhood with tales of haints and bogeymen populating the woods behind her
grandmother’s house in rural Alabama.
Hinson 2

The small town I grew up in was twenty miles from the nearest movie theater.
Live theater was non-existent, and the library was a bookmobile that parked at the end
of the street once a month for two hours. I was allowed to check out three books, a
number sorely insufficient for my appetite, so I supplemented by creating my own
stories. Many of these stories were retellings of the ones I heard from my mother and
classmates, but others came from the books I read. I also fancied myself a fine director,
assembling the neighborhood kids in what was part mime, part karaoke events as we
acted out my brother’s many Spiderman story albums.
Years later, I attended New Mexico State University to study theater. I did not
complete the program, but the time spent there fed that hunger for storytelling that has
never subsided. Several years and two children later, I completed my bachelor’s degree
and began teaching high school and college-level courses in Language Arts,
Composition, and Literature. I attempted to channel my storytelling demon into the
classroom and community theater, yet the urge to tell my own stories remained strong
within me. I completed a master’s degree in Humanities, struggling to bridge the
disconnect I felt between teaching and writing.
It was during this time I found myself drawn to study of the feminine. My
dissertation dealt with defining the female tragic hero in dramatic works and literature.
In the process, I discovered a passion for research that almost paralleled my desire to
write creatively. After a few more years in the classroom, restless and burned out, I took
serious stock of my life and realized that I was not going to be satisfied until I gave
Hinson 3

myself the room and time for my own writing. I quit my teaching job, sold my house,
and moved to Albuquerque. Several months later, I was fortunate enough to be
accepted into UNM’s MFA in Dramatic Writing program, where I began a three-year
odyssey that has led to an increased appreciation of the writing process and introduced
me to several colleagues who have become friends and mentors.
Hinson 4

BEING A SCHOLAR-ARTIST:
PRACTICE AS RESEARCH
For me, the exploration of the feminine has been a most satisfying yet
incomplete pursuit over the past decade. I realized at the end of the second year of the
Dramatic Writing program I have exhausted neither the research nor the creative
examination I wish to undertake concerning feminine archetypes and mythology. This
realization came in large part while completing the class Critical Issues in the Performing
Arts. This course not only reawakened in me my love of research but finally bridged the
chasm I had experienced for years between my “scholar” self and my “artist” self. There
was a way to bring the two together.
In his introduction to Practice as Research in the Arts, Robin Nelson calls for a
“pedagogy in which ‘professional practice’ and ‘academic theory’ are not separated”
(18). Nelson’s praxis approach is “theory imbricated within practice” (5) or, “an iterative,
dialogic engagement of doing-thinking” (18). His use of the word imbricated, a botany
term describing the overlapping arrangement of petals or scales, provides a vision of
how the academic and creative can exist together as a “third species” (Haseman, qtd. In
Nelson, 22) of knowledge. Practice as Research has changed my way of thinking about
my current and future writing in exciting ways. I am more engaged with the artistic
process, both mine and others. I think about my writing more deeply, am more willing
to experiment-- and fail if need be-- as I explore the archetypes, imagery, and themes I
feel drawn towards. Writing has stopped being a hobby and has become a conversation,
Hinson 5

a means of attempting to define my world, to make more conscious decisions and
attempts to unravel the knots in my brain.
In this paper, I will attempt to approach my work with this “third species” of
knowledge. Integrating research from mythology, women’s studies, and playwriting, I
will begin by discussing my script Lilith, Darling and the role of a pair of red high-heeled
shoes. Then, I will move to my teleplay Shared Misery and the archetype of the
Madwoman. For my third work, Angels All Die, I will discuss how a casual question from
high school students led to practice as research, my own creative research inquiry into
the archetype of the female Trickster.