ONLINE FIRST
published on March 13, 2015
Rachel Hastings
Western Genders, African Bodies
The Theatrics of (e)Racing Black Women
The stage is often a space where artists engage in experiments with identity politics. Plays like Welcome to Thebes appear to present global human engagement and a cultural exchange of ideas. However, using European narrative structures as a playground to explore Africana political issues highlights the limitations to cross-cultural exchange between aesthetic paradigms. This essay first articulates a conflict between European and Africana aesthetics and then offers an analysis of gender dynamics operating in the play Welcome to Thebes, arguing that performative conditions not only constrain racialized realities, but also limit the possibility of cross-cultural performances of history.