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Geographies of Oppression—The Cross-Border Politics of (M)othering: The Break of Day and A Yearning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Elaine Aston
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Extract

In the autumn of 1995 the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, UK, staged two plays which offer a dramatic treatment of the politics of motherhood: Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Break of Day (Haymarket Mainhouse, first performance 26 October 1995) and Ruth Carter's A Yearning (Haymarket Studio, 31 October to 4 November 1995). Neither play had significant box-office success, and The Break of Day received poor and hostile reviews from (male) critics, many of whom, like Paul Taylor for The Independent, commented on the play as a dramatization of ‘how the maternal drive can cause women to betray orthodox feminism’. My counter argument is that by addressing infertility as a feminist issue for the 1990s, both plays index the need to re-conceive a politics of motherhood in an international arena, highlighting the ways in which the biological contours of women's lives are globally mapped with the specificities of social, material and cultural geographies.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1999 , pp. 247 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999

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References

Notes

1. The Break of Day sold 1263 seats over 9 performances compared to Three Sisters which sold 1120 over 2 performances. A Yearning sold 469 seats over 7 performances. Statistics supplied by Haymarket Theatre.

2. The Independent, 30 November 1995, p. 13.

3. It is also interesting to note how the most ‘typical attenders’ for Haymarket productions (women) account for 70% of their audience profile, and are grouped largely in the age range 25–54 years—this roughly approximates to Wertenbaker's forty-something generation of women. Statistics supplied by the Haymarket Theatre.

4. Wertenbaker, interview in Stephenson, Heidi & Langridge, Natasha, eds., Rage and Reason (London: Methuen, 1997), p. 144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. I have taken ‘democratic opening’ from Honor Ford Smith's account of the 1970s birth of Sistren, the Jamaican Women's organization, ‘Ring Ding in a Tight Corner’, in Alexander, M. Jacqui & Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, eds., Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 213–58.Google Scholar Ford-Smith qualifies ‘democratic opening’ as ‘a moment in history in which there was a possibility for those who are oppressed to intervene in history and transform their society’ (P. 217).

6. See Judith Johnson on England and its ‘island mental ity’ in the afterword to her play Uganda, in Edwardes, Pamela, ed., Frontline Intelligence 3: New Plays for the Nineties (London: Methuen, 1995), p. 133.Google Scholar

7. Wertenbaker, Timberlake, The Break of Day (London: Faber, 1995), pp. 82–3.Google Scholar

8. For instance, in order to win over Dr Romanova at the Ministry of Health, Eva, a self-confessed ‘ideologist of the heart’, ‘performs’ in the style of a Western domestic melodrama, calling on her to have ‘pity for the mother and child in this world full of pain’ (p. 81).

9. There is a parallel to be drawn, I think, between the small group of people involved in the cross-border adoption and the small-scale touring company which Robert, Tess's husband, joins to play Vershinin in Chekhov's Three Sisters. (Act Three is set backstage in a northern provincial theatre on Robert's last night of the production, p. 89.) Both situations involve small groups of people committed to social and cultural ‘causes’, based on selfless rather than selfish principles. In respect of the Chekhov production, for example, it is made clear that this is a non-profit-making enterprise that very few people will go to see.

10. Overseas adoption is generally referred to in the UK as either transracial or intercultural. Explained to me by Alison Altman, telephone interview, 9 February 1998.

11. Earlier, in 1994, overseas adoption received media attention through the case of a British couple, Adrian and Bemadette Mooney, who were given a jail sentence (later suspended) for trying to smuggle a child out of Romania.

12. It was this programme which prompted Alison Altman to embark on the overseas adoption of her daughter, Rosa, a cross-border child who arrived in the UK in 1997. As a feminist, Altman was particularly distressed by the way in which it was the baby girls who, in China, are left to die. Altman, telephone interview, 9 February 1998.

13. While it would be wrong to assume that this is a phenomenon of all overseas adoption, contributors to Funk, Nanette & Mueller, Magda, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar note that this is a problem specific to certain post-Communist countries. For example, writing on women in Romania in the volume, Mariana Hausleitner notes how the lifting of restrictions on the adoption of Romanian babies gave rise to a ‘booming business’ (p. 57), and Alena Heitlinger detailing post-Communist changes for Czech and Slovak women cites instances of international ‘commercial exploitation of women's sexual and childbearing capacity’ in cases of international surrogacy and adoption (p. 104).

14. It is difficult to dramatize the trauma of infertility treatment without either falling into the trap of presenting the bourgeois, individualist, personal struggle of one would-be mother, or, appearing to argue a backlash return to motherhood as women's biological, essentialist destiny. It is important to note, therefore, the way in which Tess's struggle is staged through a Brechtian dramaturgy and within the motif of the cross-border adoption.

15. In Act One, for example, Wertenbaker introduces the figure of Natasha who is possibly a Bosnian refugee and is employed by Tess as a domestic. It becomes clear, however, that nobody really knows where she is from or who she is, and not until the end of the act is it considered important to find out.

16. Ruth Carter, A Yearning, unpublished manuscript, p. 42.

17. I am grateful to Alicia Arrizón for the proposal she made in our IFTR/FIRT feminist working group that I ‘contest’ in order to open up other ways of feminist ‘seeing’.

18. Quoted in the programme notes to A Yearning.

19. Ibid. This point is reinforced in moments when Amar cannot follow figurative speech. She is confused for example by the old woman who gossips with her asking ‘when you step out doesn't the mangiest dog in the street start sniffing’, and Amar, totally puzzled, asks ‘Dog? What Dog?’ (Carter, , A Yearning, p. 17).Google Scholar

20. Patel, Pragna, ‘Third Wave Feminism and Black Women's Activism’ in Mirza, Heidi Safia, ed., Black British Feminism (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 264.Google Scholar Patel also discusses the ‘bounty hunter’, and the tracking down of Asian women who, like Amar, are trying to escape from an oppressive, abusive or violent family ‘home’ (pp. 264–5).

21. Ghjarat Samalhai, 6 October 1995, p. 15.

22. This is typified, for example, by the way in which the Haymarket's 1995 Asian initiative (A Yearning was staged as part of this initiative) took place in the studio rather than the mainhouse space, and by the way in which A Yearning takes its shape from a ‘classic’, white text.

23. Patel, , ‘Third Wave Feminism’, p. 263.Google Scholar

24. One other ‘choice’ might be to take one's own life. Patel notes the relatively high suicide rates among Asian women in Britain between the ages of 16 and 35 which are three times the national average (p. 263). See also Patel's commentary on the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case, in which Ahluwalia was convicted for the murder of her violent husband (pp. 258–60), as a parallel to the fictional case of Amar's murder.

25. For an overview of Segal's own unconventional life and career, see Grimley, Terry, ‘Zohra's Stage Yearning Fulfilled’, Birmingham Post, 26 09 1995, p. 10.Google Scholar

26. Amar was played by Sudha Bhuchar, known to audiences for her role in the BBC television soap opera, East-Enders.

27. Patel, , ‘Third Wave Feminism’, pp. 267–8.Google Scholar