Book/video reviews

Women, Modernism and Performance. Penny Farfan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; illustrations, xi + 173 pages; ISBN 0-521-83780-4; $75.00US (cloth).
Penny Farfan's Women, Modernism and Performance is an engaging exploration of the lives and careers of a variety of female literary and performing artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose work both informed and was informed by modernism. Employing a broad definition of performance, Farfan bolsters her analysis of literary, critical, and performance texts with evidence from sources such as courtroom trials, public lectures and "the performance of gender in the practice of everyday life" (3) as she constructs her arguments about these artists' contributions to "the transformation of the representation of gender in both art and life" (119). The six chapters, skillfully woven together, combine to create a vivid portrait of feminist discourse in modern theatre that is a welcome contribution to the fields of gender studies, performance studies, and theatre history.
The chapters dovetail with one another on various levels, creating a multifaceted narrative that explores the complex relationship between "representation and lived experience" (8). Farfan begins by establishing Henrik Ibsen's tragic heroine Hedda Gabler as a complicated icon for late nineteenth and early twentieth century women, putting Hedda, and Ibsen's other heroines, at the center of her discussion of two actresses, Elizabeth Robins and Ellen Terry. Farfan's juxtaposition of the actresses' different reactions to Ibsen's work raises interesting questions about interpretations and applications of feminist thought. One of the strengths of Farfan's consideration of Robins and

Terry is that she views their theatrical work in relation to their work as theorists and public intellectuals, throwing their artistic endeavors into relief against the cultural sphere out of which they emerged. In chapter three Farfan deftly segues into a discussion of the ways in which several of Virginia Woolf's works idealize "the stage as potential site for expansive and liberating self-expression" (50). Chapter four's examination of obscenity and the intersection of culture at large and stage representations is a tour-de-force of the interdisciplinary approach that Farfan outlines in her introduction, as she draws connections between the ways in which literary, visual, and performing arts reflect and challenge cultural attitudes about gender. In the final two chapters, Farfan explores Woolf's "interest in performance as a site of subversive potential" (90-91), and picks apart the myth of the "cultural icon of the tragic female artist" (102) by looking at the posthumous reputation of American dancer Isadora Duncan. These two chapters raise compelling questions about the "transformative potential of art for social actors" (118), though the arguments contained therein are not as finely or persuasively wrought as those of the previous chapters.
In Women, Modernism and Performance, Penny Farfan offers a counter-narrative to the "narratives of modern theatre history that...do not address the efforts of women artists to develop alternatives to both mainstream theatre practice and to the patriarchal avant garde" (2). Although it may be somewhat daunting for readers who are not already familiar with the period and the people that Farfan discusses, the text provides a fascinating and fresh look

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at modern theatre history and serves as a provocative model for historical research.
Margaret F. Savilonis independent scholar - California