Act your age. This common admonition provides the springboard for this monograph, which is based on the premise that age is performative in nature, 1 and that issues of age and performance are nowhere more evident than on the modern stage. Although other genres and media do raise issues of aging, this study takes the view that drama most specifically highlights age as performative, overtly demonstrating on stage the reiterated actions that create an illusion of stable age. Dramatic conventions include actors who perform different ages not only from one act to the next, but also from one moment to the next. Moreover, directors regularly cast actors against their chronological ages, so that they must portray an age different from their own. While similar conventions have been interrogated in other areasâcross-gender and cross-racial casting, for exampleâtheatrical practices associated with age have gone largely unquestioned by scholars. On the other hand, the popular media finally are addressing these issues; I began collecting media mentions of unusual age casting in film and television as well as theatre, thinking it would be useful to cite a few examples in this introduction, but soon was overwhelmed with possibilities, from casting a fifty-year-old as a âBond Girlâ to seventy-six-year-old Derek Jacobiâs playing Mercutio. 2 Unexpectedly, scholarship has lagged behind recent public attention to the conventions of performing age, particularly of casting older actors, after many years of silence.
Performing Age in Modern Drama investigates these conventions in canonical plays from the early twentieth century to the present. As age scholars would be most likely to begin by addressing the canon, it is even more telling that most of the plays included here have not attracted critical attention regarding age. While this analysis will show varying attitudes toward performing age, the plays as a whole reveal a sense of ageless self, a longing to present a consistent, unified identity. This dramatic longing for agelessness reflects a well-known phenomenon among older people, that they feel younger than their chronological ages. The current popular spokesperson for old age, longtime performer Betty White, observes that the âbest thing about being in your 90s is youâre spoiled rotten. Everybody spoils you like mad and they treat you with such respect because youâre old. Little do they know, you havenât changed. You havenât changed in [the brain]. Youâre just 90 every place elseâ (Shira). The works included in this study reflect these prevailing social perceptions of the aging process as well as the tensions between chronological age, physiological age, and the cultural construction of age.
The prescription of socially acceptable behaviors associated with chronological age further complicates the performance of age; if a performance falls outside behavioral norms, that person is perceived as not acting his or her age and can expect social censure. In everyday life, censuring the performance of age often concerns the subject who is past the physical âprimeâ of young adulthood, but who clings to the clothing, hairstyle, and manners of a young adult. Conversely, an underage person who attempts to perform young adulthood will draw censure for falsely projecting maturity. Moreover, twentieth-century American society separates generations distinctly enough to censure anyone who crosses a generational divide: acting about twenty years different from oneâs own chronological age. At that point, the performativity that creates the ârealityâ of age conflicts too strongly with the chronological age of the subject, resulting in social rejection of the performance.
In recent years, performance critics have favored analyzing such everyday performance over responding to drama and the theatre itself. However, I agree with Anthony Kubiak, who views the theatre as the necessary center of scholarly engagement with theatricality and performance. In Agitated States: Performance in the American Theater of Cruelty, Kubiak writes, âI am suggesting an embracing, a recognition, a deployment of theater itself as the space within which we can begin to see the profound depths of the theatricality and performativity of American culture: theater as theatricalityâs cureâ (xi). I assert that the natural starting point for a discussion of age as performance is the theatre.
In Aged by Culture, theorist Margaret Morganroth Gullette proclaims, âAbout age as a performance, we need to start the argumentsâ (159). Leni Marshall and I aimed toward starting those arguments a few years ago in Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance, and Film. Staging Age intended to expand the spectrum of inquiry into the performance of age by spanning several media. Performing Age in Modern Drama is an outgrowth of that volume, specifying modern drama as a focal point of age-performance studies. This monograph first and foremost examines the dramatic text both on the page and on the stage, both its choices and its silences. I want to blur the disciplinary lines drawn between drama, theatre, and performance, which I find impede the examination of age, and to reassert the importance of the dramatic text in theatre studies. In this endeavor, I echo R. Darren Gobert, who recently surveyed the state of the field in assuming the editorship of Modern Drama. While he acknowledges that some theatre critics believe that âthe field of theatre studies has left drama behindâ (285), Gobert argues that the âlanguage of citation, so frequently invoked in performance studies, returns us to textual criticism, whose methodology remains important to theatre scholarsâ (291). In short, for those interested in dramatic literature, theatrical production, and performance, Performing Age in Modern Drama contends that age should be an essential component of the critical conversation. For those interested in age studies, the volume suggests that these plays illumine cultural constructions of age and aging.
A few critics have shown interest in the study of age involving theatre, but that interest tends to divide into two camps: focusing on performances by the elderly, overlooking both the range of age performativity and textual analysis, or commenting on the representation of the elderly in a dramatic text, overlooking issues of performativity and the analysis of age over the life course. Most closely related to my project are two monographs published fifteen years apart. Anne Davis Basting limits The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture (1998) to the study of aged performers and examines performance rather than the written text. Michael Manganâs 2013 monograph, Staging Ageing, also centers on old age in performance rather than approaching age itself as a performance. His volume tends to draw examples from British theatre, while Performing Age leans toward the American stage. This volume seeks to build on their stellar work by examining all ages as performative and focusing on drama. While the scope of this study is not limited to American drama, it centers on plays in English that have participated in American culture. Seeking to correct how age has been overlooked when scholars analyze the construction of identity in canonical plays, I use success on the American stage as an indication of contemporary canonization.
Manganâs publication is one example of a rising tide of interest in age performance and performativity, both in scholarship and in broader culture. Summarizing the results of the inaugural European Network in Aging Studies conference, Aagje Swinnen and Cynthia Port identify performativity as one of the significant critical turns in international, interdisciplinary age studies:
As Basting notes in Stages of Age, a performative approach to age studies must account for the physical changes of the aging body. Here, examining the dramatic text in production offers the mediation of drawing attention simultaneously to the body on stage, which ages before the audienceâs eyes while maintaining the illusion of stability, and the textual character who travels through time, either in memory or in the time lapse between scenes. The conscious performance of age on stage points to age as unconscious performative.The notion of performativity defines age not only as a state of being but through acts of doing. Theories of performativity claim that age identities are formed and perpetuated through the repetition of behavioral scripts connected to chronological ages and life stages. Since a repetition can never be identical to its original script, there is always the possibility of subversion and change. The concept of performativity has particular significance in performance studies, as actors both enact age upon the stage and negotiate behavioral norms associated with their own chronological ages. But it also offers an illuminating conceptual approach to understanding the actions and behaviors of individuals and groups across the life span. (12)
As this study focuses on age across the life span rather than the aged end of the continuum, the plays included do not necessarily highlight elderly characters. When dealing with binaries, most scholars will assume that the interest lies in the marked, unprivileged positionâin this case, the elderly. Such an emphasis, in turn, can cause discomfort among scholars whoâconsciously or unconsciouslyâshare societyâs fear of becoming marked with age; thus, age studies has continued to be marginalized within theatre studies and literary studies. In response to this situation, this volume purposefully analyzes works that emphasize several ages, rather than only older ages. In fact, the ages of characters addressed range from seven to over ninety, and most are middle-aged. Perhaps this broadening of the discussion of age beyond the aged end of a binary opposition will increase comfort with the subject. Moreover, expanding the exploration of age to include performance studies provides a different insight into the construction of age and its norms in contemporary Western culture.
Although society enforces behavioral norms in everyday interaction, theatregoers grant actors much more flexibility in performing age, since this performance purports to be only a representation of both the biologically based understanding of age and its social construction. Audiencesâand criticsâoften remain silent about the difference in age between an actor and a character, or will applaud the talents of actors who can âconvincinglyâ perform ages that differ significantly from their own. Casting against chronological age remains common in the theatre, while casting against type in other categoriesâsuch as race or genderâhas stirred controversy. The playwright, production, audience, and critic can be complicit in ignoring or denying what theatrical conventions suggest about age in culture.
Beyond academic circles, aging is garnering greater attention as the oldest members of the Baby Boom generation are reaching seventy, while the very youngest Boomers are passing fifty. All of the more than 76 million Americans who comprise the largest population group in U.S. history face issues associated with middle age and beyond. The popular interest in age and aging has burgeoned in concordance with the growing number of older adults, and much of that interest addresses age as a performance, the relationship between chronological age and apparent age. Websites will analyze how old a subject looks in a photo, and a Facebook quiz asks what kind of old person you will be, 3 raising in popular culture the question of transformation or continuity of self as one ages. At the same time, the Boomersâ grandchildren are growing up in an online culture that allows every moment of maturing to be captured. One of the most striking examples is the video that Sam Cornwell created from 2012 to 2013 of his sonâs first year, compiling one second each day from birth. 4 The rapid physical transformation occurring between birth and adulthood is in the public consciousness as well.
Always in the spotlight, the Baby Boomers have had a profound influence on the national and international agendas. As they have moved through the life course, they have been consistently intrigued by identity formation and characterized as being obsessed with youth. Moreover, they refuse to be marginalized as an elderly population. As todayâs aged population rejects the traditional construction of older age, I contend that a more inclusive method of analyzing age, focusing on the performance of all ages rather than the segregation of older age, can combat widespread ageism not only among the general population, but also among scholars, who have overlooked age during decades of identity-oriented criticism. This big-tent approach can continue to develop the age-studies field, focusing on age as a category of identity rather than examining only the aged as one half of a binary opposition between youth and old age.
Performing Age in Modern Drama thus is situated at the intersection of theatre studies, performance studies, literary studies, and age studies. Literary and age-studies scholars have begun to turn to performance approaches, and performance-studies scholars have begun to explore age. Interest in a humanities-based inquiry into the meaning and the lived experience of old age has been building in such professional associations as the Gerontological Society of America, which now includes an active Humanities and Arts Committee. The number of interdisciplinary age-studies scholars is growing steadily as well, judging from the development of the North American Network in Aging Studies, the European Network in Aging Studies, and the Age Studies Forum of the Modern Language Association. Various disciplines contributing to age studies use specific and sometimes conflicting definitions of some of the concepts explored in this volume. With this in mind, I endeavor here to limit jargon and employ terms such as âself,â âidentity,â ânarrative,â âperformance,â and âperformativityâ broadly enough that the full spectrum of readers will find the text accessible and useful.
This book groups plays both by chronology and by approach to age portrayal. Such a separation makes it less apparent that several of the texts fall into the general category of memory plays, from the seminal The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman to âDa,â Dancing at Lughnasa, The Invention of Love, How I Learned to Drive, and Wit. While this volume treats the plays individually across three different chapters, a broader view of this contemporary subgenre emerges. Critics such as Marc Robinson have remarked on the fluidity of time as a staple of the memory play (263). Although scholars discuss that fluidity in myriad ways, they tend to overlook that it is always about aging. The performing body appears stable on stage, while the actor portrays decades of age difference without any perceptible change. Thus, the memory play as a subgenre can challenge contemporary Western cultureâs binary construction pitting young against old, as it calls attention to all ages sharing a performative basis. The frequent, nonlinear changing of ages in such plays creates the illusion that adult identity is stable, not moored to time, and thus that old age is not to be feared as Other.
This model of identity formation posed in the memory play can be traced back to John Lockeâs concept of selfhood detailed in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which identity comprises the individualâs chain of memories. In Book II, Locke asserts:
The self constituted as memory lends authority to the conclusion that the protagonist of a memory play is constructing not just a story on stage, bu...For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done. (210â11)