Big Daddy Lives or Don’t Say the F Word: Intersectional Feminist Directing in Theory and in Practice

Abstract

As a theatre and gender studies double major at the University of Victoria, I have been ableto critically think about the ways each of my fields of study could benefit the other. In myexperience, many courses in the UVic Department of Theatre generally focus on dramatic texts andtheoretical literature written by white men. Consequently, contributions to the theatre by women,people of colour, and/or non-Western theatre practitioners are largely dismissed or ignored. Myfrustration with this pattern was what led me to create Big Daddy Lives or Don’t Say the F Word,a part scripted, part devised performance piece that staged scenes from classic and contemporaryplays using directing theory written by feminists, for feminists. I curated the excerpts, wrote thetransition-text, and directed the play using an intersectional feminist framework. The project wasan experiment in applying intersectional feminism to theatre directing in order to critique the waythe male-dominated canon of plays and theories shapes theatre education. Through this project, Ifound that intersectional feminist directing techniques foster collaboration; encourage discussionand mutual education about identity, oppression, and representation; and can be applied to theproduction of both classics and contemporary feminist plays and to the creation of new work by anensemble.