Nora, Lucia, and Lear: Gender and Performance at Mabou Mines

Abstract

The American avant-garde company Mabou Mines embraces an ethos of collectivity, which infuses both its artistry and administrative work. This egalitarianism challenges a conventional top-down structure which positions the habitually male director as the omniscient artistic authority. Collectivity provides an alternate paradigm for artists of all genders—one that authorises a range of perspectives and empowers the autonomy of artists. Embracing a cacophony of voices has led to a conscious rejection of a ‘house style.’ However, a common set of foci emerges in the work of co-artistic directors over the company’s production history. The key productions examined here, Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, Mabou Mines DollHouse, and Mabou Mines’s Lear, take up queer and feminist concerns from a range of perspectives, rather than recycling a singular ideological perspective.