University of Virginia Press Staging Creolization: Women's Theatre and Performance Frm the French Caribbean (New World Studies Modern Language Initiative)

About the Author Emily Sahakian is Assistant Professor of Theater and French at the University of Georgia, Athens. Product Description <p>In <i>Staging Creolization,</i> Emily Sahakian examines seven plays by Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Gerty Dambury, and Simone Schwarz-Bart that premiered in the French Caribbean or in France in the 1980s and 1990s and soon thereafter traveled to the United States. Sahakian argues that these latae-twentieth-century plays by French Caribbean women writers dramatize and enact creolization—the process of cultural transformation through mixing and conflict that occurred in the context of the legacies of slavery and colonialism.</p><p>Sahakian here theorizes creolization as a performance-based process, dramatized by French Caribbean women’s plays and enacted through their international production and reception histories. The author contends that the syncretism of the plays is not a static, fixed creole aesthetics but rather a dynamic process of creolization in motion, informed by history and based in the African-derived principle that performance is a space of creativity and transformation that connects past, present, and future.</p> Review Staging Creolization...examines seven plays written by French Caribbean women playwrights and contends that the process of creolization, which builds upon the legacies of colonialism and slavery, is brought to the fore upon the stage. However, the US productions of these plays, staged by Ubu Repertory Theater, produced conflicting outcomes...Sahakian argues that each production undergoes a process of creolization when performed. To support her...research, Sahakian is in conversation with scholars whose work centre on gender, Caribbean theoretical movements, the Black Atlantic and performance studies; and thus, adds a new perspective that converges with discourses of performance, gender and the ongoing phenomenon of creolization. --Sherri V. Cummings, author of Journal of Caribbean History[A] fascinating study of French Caribbean women's theater [that] greatly contributes to this exciting and developing field.... [Of] interest to both scholars of Caribbean studies and theater practitioners and specialists, who in the disciplinary interstices thrown up in Sahakian's study may uncover as of yet unseen connections and potential inspiration for further interdisciplinary study. --Vanessa Lee, author of H-France Review[I]mpeccably researched, meticulously analyzed, and impressively documented... Staging Creolization [is] an exceptional piece of scholarship. [Sahakian's] self-awareness, self-interiority, and self-reflection as archivist, ethnographer, and theater scholar in this work add to the strength and quality of this monographic study. In its bringing together cultural analysis, textual analysis, and performance analysis, Staging Creolization is essential reading--across all disciplines and languages--for scholars and students alikeof theater and performance studies. --author of Bulletin of the Comediantes[T]he subject matter is complex and this book repays diligent lucubration, not least for its fascinating insights and rich, interdisciplinary analysis. --author of New West Indian GuideMotion, contradiction, ambiguity, tension...these concepts comprise the multi-faceted lens through which Emily Sahakian's Staging Creolization investigates women's theatre and performance from the French Caribbean...[the book]...break[s] up the historical cement upon which Creoleness has been rooted over the last three decades and takes its canon to task not only for its failure to incorporate women's voices in its theory, but especially for its characterization of Créolité as fixed and stable...[T]he theoretical assemblage of Sahakian's book is fascinating and strong. It is thrilling to read a work that transparently engages with the more thorny issues of its genre. --Jodie Barker, author of Women in French StudiesSahakian undertook an enormous task with