To Girl or Not to Girl

Abstract

Naomi Wallace—the award-winning Kentucky-born playwright, poet, scriptwriter, political activist, and educator—presents an interesting conundrum to those seeking to understand the attraction of her plays to two generations of cutting-edge directors, performers, designers, dramaturgs, and spectators. What makes her work so popular with a new generation of theatre spectators and practitioners, yet marked as “outsider” art, rebuffed by commercial main stages of West End and Broadway? Why, despite decades of honors, awards, and advocacy, is the work of Naomi Wallace so often labeled “alternative” or “political”? In Britain, where she has been based since 1997, Wallace has had her work produced at regional theatres and London stages from the Bush Theatre to the Trafalgar Studios and the National. In 2012, she became the first living American playwright to have a play accepted into the permanent repertory of France’s national theatre, La Comédie-Française. But in her native country, Wallace’s plays examining power, homophobia, racism, sexuality, and war seem destined to be produced at university, off-Broadway, and regional theatres, while response to her work by mainstream American critics has ranged from lukewarm acknowledgment of her innovative style to downright hostility towards her political content.¹